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THE 



MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



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WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., 

MINISTER OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITY. 







NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

900 BROADWAY, Cor. 20th Stbeet. 
1876. 



A 



-IBRARY 

of Congress 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1876, by 
Anson D. F. Randolph & Company. 




ROBERT RUTTER, 
BIN DEB., 

84 BEEKMAN STREET, N. Y. 



EDWARD O. JENKINS, 
PBINTER AND STEREOTYPER, 
20 NORTH WILLIAM ST., N. Y. 



Til AIAKONIA TOT AOTOT nPOSKAPTEPHSOMEN. 

—Acts vi. 4. 



PREFACE. 



This book is not a Treatise on Homiletics, Neither is it 
a ministerial autobiography. But it is an attempt to give 
to my younger brethren in the pulpit, and to those who 
are preparing for the ministry, some practical hints which 
I should have been thankful to have received twenty years 
ago, and which have been suggested to me as much by the 
blunders as by the successes of my public life. 

To my seniors they may seem to be of little importance ; 
but I was not writing for them. My aim has been to set 
before my readers a few first principles emphasized by ex- 
perience, and if my book shall be to any young minister 
like the hand of an elder brother held back to help him 
forward, I shall rejoice even more than he. 

The course was prepared especially for the theological 
students of Yale College, as the " Lyman Beecher Lec- 
tures " for 1876 ; but selections from it were delivered also 
to the members of Union, Princeton, and Oberlin Theo- 
logical Seminaries. 

To these young brethren, with whom I have been 
brought so pleasantly into fellowship; to the members oi 
the Faculties of the Seminaries which I have named, and 
to all interested in the education of " the Sons of the 
Prophets," I dedicate this volume, with the prayer that lie 
"whose I am, and whom I serve," may make it largely 
useful to those who are preparing to give themselves to 
" the ministry of the Word." 

New York, April, 1876. 



CONTENTS 



I. The Nature and Design of the Christian 

Ministry, ....... i 

II. The Preparation of the Preacher, . . 23 

III. The Preparation of the Preacher — Con- 

tinued, 51 

IV. The Theme and Range of the Pulpit, . . 79 

V. The Qualities of Effective Preaching — in 

the Sermon, 105 

VI. The Qualities of an Effective Sermon — in 

the Preacher, 129 

VII. Expository Preaching, 153 

VIII. On the Use of Illustrations in Preaching, 181 

IX. The Conduct of Public Worship — Reading of 

the Scriptures, 205 

X. The Conduct of Public Worship — Praise and 

Prayer, .... ... 229 

XI. The Pastorate and Pastoral Visitation, . 257 

XII. The Relation of the Pulpit to Present 

Questions, 2S1 

Passages of Scripture Quoted or Referred to, . 307 

Index, 300 



LECTURE I. 

THE NATURE AND DESIGN OF THE CHRISTIAN 
MINISTRY. 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



LECTURE I. 

THE NATURE AND DESIGN OF THE CHRISTIAN 
MINISTRY. 



" \\f HAT can the man do that cometh after the 
*' King?" My two distinguished predeces- 
sors in this Lectureship, unmindful of the generous 
order of Boaz to his reapers, to u let fall some of the 
handfuls of purpose " for the poor Gentile gleaner, 
have so thoroughly swept the field, that nothing is 
left for me save here and there an ear. This would 
be hard for anyone ; how much more for one who 
has to confess that he is, as yet, a learner in the de- 
partment in which they are masters ! For two and 
twenty years I have been striving to reach my ideal 
of the Christian preacher, and it seems to me as if I 
were to-day as far from it as ever. Always as I have 
appeared to advance towards it, it has fled before 
me, and still it hovers above and beyond me, beck- 
oning me on to some attainment yet unrealized. 
Never did it seem to me so difficult to preach as it 
does to-day. The magnitude of the work grows upon 
me the longer I engage in it ; and with every new 



2 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

attempt I make, there comes the painful conscious- 
ness that I have not yet attained. Twenty years ago, 
I thought I could preach a little, and flattered my- 
self that I knew something about Homiletics. Now 
I feel that I am but a beginner, and the thought of 
addressing you upon such a subject fills me with dis- 
may. Still we may get on well together, if only you 
will consent to regard me as a fellow-student, or 
at least as an elder brother, striving with you after 
the same end, and speaking to you out of the full- 
ness of his heart, that he may warn you to avoid the 
mistakes which he has made, and stimulate you to 
aim after that efficiency on which his own heart is 
set. 

The nature of this Lectureship requires that he 
who holds it, for the time, should deal with the sub- 
ject, as illustrated by his own experience. It may 
be well, therefore, in the outset, that I should men- 
tion one or two cautions which need to be kept in 
mind by you, while we are proceeding with our ad- 
dresses. 

In the first place, it must be fully understood by 
you, that no one can begin precisely at that point at 
which another has arrived only after long years of 
persevering effort. The son of the merchant entering 
upon the possession of his father's fortune, may com- 
mence housekeeping on the same scale as his parents. 
But, even then, it has been generally seen that he is 
deficient in those qualities of character which were 
most distinctive in his father, and which in him were 
formed by the struggle through which he wrestled up 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 



3 



to his success. You may acquire a legacy in a mo- 
ment, but you cannot, all at once, step into that 
homiletic habit which it has taken another long years 
to form, and by which he is able at a glance to see 
into the heart of a subject, and to know precisely how 
to treat it so as to impress his hearers most deeply 
with its importance. You cannot obtain, as one might 
say, ready-made, that ease in work and fluency in ut- 
terance which it has taken him almost a lifetime to 
acquire. 

Some, indeed, have, from the very first, mani- 
fested such skill in handling subjects, and such 
eloquence in discoursing on them, that we may fairly 
speak of them as men of genius, in this peculiar de- 
partment. But these are the exceptions. The great 
majority of those who have become eminent in the 
pulpit, have grown into their greatness. They have, 
under God, made themselves for their position, by 
watchful self- discipline, and steady perseverance. 
Now, you cannot reach the end at which they have 
arrived, without using means similar to those which 
they employed. At first they were, as you are now, 
inexperienced, and, perhaps, also somewhat censo- 
rious, more skillful in criticising the sermons of others 
than in sermonizing for themselves. But at length, 
inspired by love to Christ and to the souls of men, 
they have been led so to train themselves for their 
work, that they have become truly great. 

Behind the present ability of such men as these, 
there is a history which must never be lost sight of, for 
if without their history you try to perform their work, 



4 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

in their particular way, you will inevitably and igno- 
miniously fail. Thus, one tells us that he prepares his 
sermons on the Lord's day on which they are delivered; 
and that he never writes more than the merest outline 
of them ; and you know that thousands hang with 
breathless interest upon his lips. But that is the 
ultimatum at which he has arrived, after a lifetime of 
such experiences as have rarely fallen to the lot of 
any man, and after a discipline which has been in 
some respects as thorough as it has been peculiar. 
Now, if you begin by trying to do as he is doing now, 
you will be as successful mistakes as David would have 
been in the armor of Saul. 

Another describes to us how he has discarded the use, 
if not also the preparation, of a manuscript, and as you 
listen to his stately eloquence, and see the magnificent 
ease with which he appears to sway his audiences, you 
may be led to attempt, at one leap, to vault up to the 
height on which he stands. But he had to go up, by a 
long series of single steps, the ascent of which involved 
the labor of a quarter of a century, and what is your 
puny jump to that ? 

Let it be distinctly understood, then, that the value 
of all such autobiographic glimpses as these friends 
have given us, and as we may give, consists in the 
unfolding of processes of self-culture, and in the stim- 
ulus which these impart, rather than in the commend- 
ing of the particular methods which in individual 
cases have been adopted. 

Again, it must not be forgotten that no one man can 
merge his individuality into that of another. If one is to 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 



5 






do anything effectively in the pulpit, or elsewhere, he 
must be himself. It is the glory of the Gospel of 
Christ that it lifts into itself, and transmutes into ele- 
ments of power, the very personal idiosyncracies of its 
preachers. No one of the apostles w r as cast precisely in 
the mold of another. John, and Peter, and Paul had 
their distinctive features, each of which was made in- 
strumental in bringing out some new phase of the 
truth which they all alike proclaimed. And as it was 
with them, so it is still. No preacher should try to form 
himself after the model of another. If you make such 
an attempt, you may depend upon it that what is 
character in your exemplar, will in you degenerate 
into caricature. There is something noble in a voice, 
but however excellent an echo may be as an echo, 
there is a hollowness and an indistinctness about it 
which gives it unreality. The poorest wild flower 
that blooms beneath the hedge, is better than the 
richest waxen imitation of the camelia or the rose, 
for it has a beauty and a fragrance of its own. 

Artificiality is repulsive anywhere, but in the pulpit 
it is worse than offensive ; for there it robs the man of 
that distinctive and individual power which God has 
given to him for the very purpose of ministering to his 
efficiency. The preaching of the gospel has been com- 
mitted to men, that through their very manhood it may 
tell the better on those whom they address ; and as each 
has his own particular characteristics, it will be found 
that in so far forth as he gives them play, he will have 
a power over his audience which no other man can 
wield. Those who have risen to the highest useful- 



6 THE MIXISTRY OF THE WORD. 

ness have done so through the consecration of them- 
selves to their work. They have laid themselves — 
not the poor imitations of other men — upon the altar, 
and the lesson of their history is, not that we should 
try to make ourselves into them, but that we should, 
like them, use all our powers and develop all our in- 
dividuality in the noble work in which we are en- 
gaged. 

Once more : we must bear in mind, that in the min- 
istry, as in other pursuits, success results only from 
continuous and systematic labor. Usefulness is not 
a mere accident. Even of Paul and Barnabas it is 
recorded on one occasion that they " so spake that a 
great multitude of the Jews, and also of the Greeks 
believed,"* implying that there was in their discourses 
a special fitness to produce conviction in the minds 
of their hearers. Now, the attainment of this adap- 
tation in our sermons requires study. It does not 
come of itself. It is not in us as it was in them, the 
result of a supernatural inspiration. It is the fruit of 
work. True, there are some men so organized that 
no amount of painstaking on their part will ever 
make them effective speakers. True, again, there are 
others who are by nature more highly gifted than 
their fellows in the attributes of the orator ; yet 
even in their case the larger part of genius is perse- 
verance ; and to him who desires to succeed in per- 
suading men by his public utterances, it must still be 
said " in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat " this 
bread also. 

* Acts xiv. i. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. j 

There will be many difficulties to overcome, and 
many excellences to be acquired. Oftentimes hu- 
miliating failures will be made ; and not seldom 
he will be tempted to give up the whole work in 
utter hopelessness. But if he will only labor on, 
with an entire devotion to his calling, an overmas- 
tering love to his fellow-men, and a sincere desire to 
glorify his Lord, then he may look for some fair meas- 
ure of usefulness, and may even attain to that ease 
and affluence of speech which, in others, he has so 
often contemplated with the envy of despair. When 
one reads of the confusion of face which attended the 
first efforts of such a man as Robert Hall, or of the 
ridiculous appearances which some of our greatest 
political orators have made in the outset of their 
careers, he will be encouraged to take heart again ; 
for though we are not all endowed as Hall was origi- 
nally, yet we may all endow ourselves with persever- 
ance, and in the end that will tell in bringing out the 
best of which we are capable. 

Let it never be forgotten, then, that he who would 
rise to eminence and usefulness in the pulpit, and be- 
come "wise in winning souls," must say of the work 
of the ministry, " This one thing I do." He must fo- 
cus his whole heart and life upon the pulpit. He must 
give his days and his nights to the production of those 
addresses by which he seeks to convince the judgments, 
and move the hearts, and elevate the lives oi' his 
hearers. 

All this, I know, is opposed to the common view. 
In the opinion of multitudes, the life oi a minister is 



8 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

one of ease and leisure. They see him only in the 
pulpit ; and as they mark the apparent " abandon " of 
his manner, and listen to the easy cadence of his 
speech, they think that it has cost him little. So as you 
look upon the accomplished gymnast flourishing his 
Indian clubs to the time of the musician, he seems to 
be making little effort, and you imagine you could do 
as well yourself. But try it, and you will discover 
that he has acquired that graceful ease only by long 
and laborious training, and that, for all so simple as 
it appears to be, he is straining every muscle to its ut- 
most, and the whole man is putting forth his energy. 
Similarly in preaching, that which seems so easy, has 
been made so only by strenuous exertion. 

If, therefore, young gentlemen, you have chosen the 
ministry, expecting to be carried to heaven " on flowery- 
beds of ease," you have made an egregious mistake. 
With such ideas, you will never rise above the merest 
drones, and you had better at once seek out some 
other pursuit. But if with something like worthy 
views of the design and reward of the gospel minis- 
try you give yourselves unreservedly and wisely 
to its prosecution ; then, in spite of its arduous toils, 
you may look for joys, the like of which this world 
gives to no other laborers. " All other pleasures are 
not worth its pains," and as you hear the cry of the 
inquirer, " What must I do to be saved ?" or the song 
of the convert whom you have brought to Jesus, 
there will be to you " an over-payment of delight " 
for all the exertions which you have made. Through 
many bitter mortifications you may have to pass: 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. g 

and not seldom you may be driven to your closet, 
with the wailing cry of the old prophet, " Who hath 
believed our report ?" But your very mistakes, wise- 
ly interpreted, will guide you to success ; and that 
longing for results which yearns in your hearts will 
stir you up to " be strong and play the men " for 
Jesus and His truth. 

Understand, then, that in the lectures which I am 
now to deliver, I do not bring to you any " short and 
easy method " to ministerial usefulness and success. 
I have nothing but the good old message of "work." 
You are not here, like so many tanks, to be filled up 
by the professors, and from which week after week 
the prescribed quantity is to be drawn for the supply 
of the people. But you are^here to put on those habits 
of study which, though they may sit more easily on 
you as the years revolve, you must keep on you to 
the very end of your course, if at least you would be 
" workmen needing not to be ashamed, rightly divid- 
ing the word of truth."* But that is no hardship. 
That will be your very life, for it will keep you from 
the rust and must of decay, while at the same time it 
will minister to your highest happiness, provided only 
your hearts be in your work : for " the labor we delight 
in physics pain." I give you joy, therefore, in the pros- 
pect that is before you, and as one never labors so 
effectively as when he sings at his toil — take this .is 
your life song : 

" I must work, through months of toil 
And years of cultivation, 

* 2 Tim. ii. 1 5. 



I0 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Upon my proper patch of soil 

To grow my own plantation. 
I'll take the showers as they fall ; 

I will not vex my bosom ; 
Enough, if at the end of all 

A little garden blossom."* 

And now these preliminaries understood, let us ad- 
vance to the consideration of our theme. I begin with 
the question,What is the nature and design of the Chris- 
tian ministry? and for an answer to that, I open the 
New Testament, where I learn, in the first place, that 
it is especially and pre-eminently a service. The first 
minister is the Lord Jesus Christ himself; and these 
are His words, " Whosoever will be great among you, 
let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief 
among you, let him be your servant ; even as the son 
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minis- 
ter, and to give his life a ransom for many."f To 
the same effect are these words at the supper-table : 
" He that is greatest among you, let him be as the 
younger ; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. 
For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he 
that serveth ? is not he that sitteth at meat ? but I 
am among you as he that serveth.":}: And in harmony 
with the principles thus enunciated, we find that when 
the sons of Zebedee sought the highest places in his 
kingdom, he said, " Can ye drink of the cup that 
I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I 
am baptized with ? " 

* Tennyson's Amphion. t Matthew xx. 26-28. 

\ Luke xxii. 26-27. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. n 

Now it is readily conceded that in these passages 
there are some things which are distinctive of Christ 
and in which we cannot perfectly resemble Him. 
Thus it is true that we cannot, in precisely the 
same sense as He did, give our lives as ransoms for 
many. Yet, it is none the less true, that this spirit 
of self-sacrifice lay at the foundation of the excel- 
lence of Christ's ministry as a whole, and gave their 
attractiveness to His discourses, as well as its re- 
demptive character to His death. If, therefore, we 
may point to Christ's parables as^ models for illustra- 
tion in the matter of our sermons, we may surely 
speak of the imitation of this consecration of Himself 
to the service of others, as the great indispensable pre- 
requisite to eminence in the ministry. In doing this, 
indeed, we are only enforcing His own words to James 
and John, and urging that the drinking of Christ's cup 
and the submitting of ourselves to His baptism, are 
the only passports to real greatness in the work to 
which we have devoted ourselves. 

This principle is far-reaching. It tells us that it is 
through manifold experiences of sorrow and pain that 
Christ fits His ministers for their highest service. He 
writes their best sermons for them on their own hearts 
with the sharp " stylus " of trial, and they are then most 
eloquent and effective when they read these oi\ to their 
hearers. Those whom He calls to His ministry, lie 
takes with Him into Gethsemane, and such as He 
would make the most eminent 1 le takes the farthest in. 
How deeply true that is, the biographies oi the most 
eminent preachers will amply attest ! 



12 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

But that is not precisely the point which I wish at this 
time to make out of His words. I want you to mark 
that this willinghood to sacrifice self in the service of 
others is the distinctive feature of ministerial great- 
ness.* The people are not for the minister, but the min- 
ister is for the people ; and he is to lose himself in their 
service and for their benefit. See how Paul had learned 
this lesson,when he says," We preach not ourselves, but 
Christ Jesus, the Lord," L e., supplying the ellipsis 
" we preach not ourselves lords, but Christ Jesus, 
Lord, and ourselves your servants, for Jesus' sake." + 



* It may seem to some that this is to make the Christian min- 
istry only a higher form of ordinary discipleship. But is it, after 
all, in the light of the New Testament, any more than that ? 
Unless we are prepared to accept the doctrine of " orders '' with 
all which that involves, we must come to the view which I have 
here expressed. I had written the above lecture before I saw 
the late Principal Fairbairn's posthumous book on " Pastoral 
Theology,'' and therefore it was with great gratification that I 
read these sentences. " It is a fundamental principle of Chris- 
tianity, that there is nothing absolutely peculiar to any one who 

has a place in the true Church If every sincere Christian 

can say, ' I am one with Christ, and have a personal interest in 
all that is His,' there can manifestly be no essential difference 
between Him and other believers ; and whatever may distinguish 
any one in particular, either as regards the call to work or the 
capacity to work in the Lord's service, it must in kind belong to 
the whole community of the faithful, or else form but a subordi- 
nate characteristic. The ministry itself in its distinctive prerog- 
atives and functions is but the more special embodiment and ex- 
hibition of those which pertain inherently to the Church, as 
Christ's spiritual body.'' (p. 64.) 

t 2 Corinthians iv. 5. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY, 



13 



Nor was this a mere momentary outflashing of senti- 
ment with the apostle, for we find him describing 
it as the principle of his life that he made himself 
servant unto all that he might gain the more ; * and 
even when he was explaining what seemed to his 
readers to be a dereliction of duty towards them, he 
said, " Not for that we have dominion over your faith, 
but are helpers of your joy." f So also Peter in ex- 
horting the elders is careful to warn them to exercise 
their oversight, " not as being lords over God's 
heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.";}: 

Now I put this in the forefront, because, as it seems 
to me, misunderstanding here, goes very far to account 
for the ministerial failures over which the churches 
mourn, and for the partial character of the successes 
which have been made by many who were otherwise 
admirably adapted for the work. I can never forget the 
impression made on me in the early portion of my Liver- 
pool ministry, when a brother who had just come with 
me from the study of a neighbor, where we had heard 
him railing for a long time against his people, said to 
me, " The truth is, he seems to think that the con- 
gregation exists for him, but the right-hearted minis- 
ter recognizes that he exists for the congregation. 
Depend upon it, his work will be a failure." And a 
failure it was. But all unconsciously to himself, the 
brother who predicted that, preached a most power- 
ful sermon to me, for if I have been blessed with the 



* 1 Corinthians ix. 19. t 2 Corinthians \. 24. 

I 1 Peter v. 3. 



1 4 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

utmost harmony between my people and myself, and 
if, in any measure, I have been useful to them, it has 
been because I have tried to remember and lay to 
heart these simple words. 

The office of the preacher is that of a helper of his 
fellows. His special duty is to lead them to Him 
who is their Helper and Redeemer, and to assist 
them in the understanding of His word, and in the 
application of its principles to their daily lives. He is 
not in the ministry, in order that he may be feted and 
flattered, and made the altar on which the adulation and 
incense of his people are to be laid. He is not set to 
receive the sacrifices offered by his hearers, but rather 
ought he to make himself a sacrifice on their behalf, aye, 
even though sometimes his devotion to them may 
be met with ingratitude ; yet, none the less is it to be 
continued by him. Hardly can we find a more sub- 
lime spectacle in itself, or a more appropriate model 
for the Christian minister, than that presented by 
Paul, when he says, " I will very gladly spend and 
be spent for you ; though the more abundantly I love 
you, the less I be loved." * 

And yet, all this abnegation of self is perfectly 
consistent with a proper magnifying of the minis- 
terial office, and is, though it may seem paradox- 
ical to say it, the surest means of obtaining the 
affection and honor of the people. He who is 
always hungering for these things, and watching 
whether or not they will be rendered to him, never 



* 2 Corinthians xii. 15. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 



15 



gets them ; while he who seeks to be the servant 
of all — comforting the sorrowful, assisting the weak, 
sustaining the burdened, directing the perplexed, 
and cheering the disconsolate — will, as he is pursuing 
his work, gather round him the love and confidence 
of his people, so that in time of trial they shall be 3. 
living wall of defence around him against all his adver- 
saries. Whosoever will be great in this field, there- 
fore, must begin by renouncing self. If you make 
yourself the end of your ambition, you will lose 
your labor, and do no good either to yourself or to 
others ; but if forgetting self, you seek the good of 
your fellows for Christ's sake, you will bless them, and 
have at last their happiness added to your own. In 
all matters of meanness, or duplicity, or corruption, 
stand upon your dignity, and do not let yourselves 
stoop to perform them ; but in all matters of loving 
service, seek your dignity through their performance, 
for usefulness and. eminence, like wisdom, are " oft- 
times nearer when we stoop, than when we soar.'' 
Thus, the motto of the ministry is that of the high- 
est nobility, "Ich Dien," I SERVE ; and he who most 
worthily acts out its meaning is already in one of its 
loftiest places. 

But to complete our idea of the nature of the 
ministry, we must take into consideration the end 
which in his life of service the preacher is to keep in 
view. Now, we find that, also, clearly set before us 
in the New Testament, for Paul, in tracing up the 
origin of the ministry to the gift of the ascended 



l6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Christ, has said, " He gave some, apostles ; and some, 
prophets ; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors 
and teachers ; for the perfecting of the saints ; for the 
work of the ministry ; for the edifying of the body of 
Christ : till we all come in the unity of the faith, and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ ; " * and in describing his own procedure, 
he speaks after this fashion, " Christ whom we preach, 
warning every man and teaching every man, in all 
wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in 
Christ Jesus ; whereunto I also labor, striving ac- 
cording to his working, which worketh in me 
mightily." f 

So also in the book of the Acts of the Apostles 
we observe, that in all their public discourses the 
first preachers of the Cross sought to carry con- 
viction to the hearts of their hearers, and used every 
means to bring them to the acceptance of Christ, and 
to the beginning of a new life in Him. Now it is 
Peter on the day of Pentecost, or in the household of 
Cornelius ; and now it is Paul in the synagogue of 
Antioch, or on the top of Mars hill, and though like 
men well skilled in the reading of human nature, they 
varied their methods with the circumstances and 
previous histories of their audiences, yet always they 
had before them as their great aim the bringing of 
souls to Christ, and the carrying of them forward to 
higher attainments in Christ. Their constant design 



*Ephesians iv. n-13. t Colossians i. 28, 29. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 



17 



was to move men to accept Him as their deliverer 
from sin, and to persuade them to adopt His precepts 
as the rule, and His example as the model of their 
lives. They endeavored everywhere to mold char- 
acter through the presentation of " the truth as it is 
in Jesus." Or, as Paul himself has phrased it, they 
constantly attempted " by manifestations of the truth " 
to commend themselves " to every man's conscience, 
in the sight of God." * 

In doing this, they did not care what happened 
to themselves. They had no eye or thought for 
anything but the benefit of their fellow-men through 
the proclamation of the gospel. Hardship might 
come upon them. They might be cast into prison 
or stoned till they were left for dead. But " none 
of these things moved them." They made ob- 
jection only when men sought to worship them as 
gods. They did not measure their success by the 
applause they evoked, or by the comforts they 
secured, but only and always by the change 'which, 
through the power of God working with them, 
they produced upon their auditors. Not to display 
themselves, or to win for themselves the reputation 
of eloquence, did they labor. They could say to all 
the congregations which they addressed what Paul 
said to the Corinthians, " I seek not yours, but you ;"f 
and their " joy and crown of rejoicing " was not in 
the preaching of sermons which might secure admi- 
ration, but rather in the winning of souls for Christ. 



*2 Corinthians iv. 2. t 2 Corinthians xii. 14. 



1 8 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

If they could succeed in that, they took joyfully the 
spoiling of their goods ; and when, as at Ephesus, 
they saw conjurors renouncing their deeds of deceit 
and burning their books of magic, they had a reward 
which more than reconciled them to the " jeopardy" 
in which " every hour" they stood. 

Now it is all-important that this one absorbing de- 
sign of the Christian ministry, as illustrated so glori- 
ously by the examples of those who were first invested 
with it, should be kept constantly before the mind of 
the preacher. For, partly owing to the public senti- 
ment at present existing, and partly, also, to the nec- 
essary rhetorical training through w r hich all candidates 
for the ministry must pass, there is great danger of 
our exalting that which is only a means, into the place 
which ought to be occupied by the end to which it is 
subordinate. 

Among us everything runs to speech. The ex- 
ercises of a commencement day are mainly " ora- 
tions ;* and eloquence at once opens the door to 
office and eminence, both in the State and in the 
Church. There is, besides, much that is gratifying to 
human pride, in being able to move large masses of 
people by the power of oratory. And so there is devel- 
oped one of the perils of the modern pulpit. The 
preacher is tempted to aim at eloquence in itself, rather 
than at that, the gaining of which is the true evidence 
that he has been eloquent ; and the doing of things 
according to strict rhetorical rule, is apt to be more 
accounted of than the securing of men's hearts for 
Christ, and the moving of them to strive after that 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. jq 

holiness which he requires. 45 " Now this is fatal, both as 
respects eloquence and as regards the impressing of our 
fellow-men. Oratory existed before rhetoric. He who 
succeeds in persuading another by the power of speech 
is, ipso facto, truly eloquent. And the rules of rhet- 
oric have been generalized from the observation of 
the methods of those who have thus succeeded. It 
is very far from my object now to undervalue these 
deductions. On the contrary, they have a value in 
their own place which can hardly be overestimated. 
But that place is mainly for the pruning away of ex- 
crescences, and the correction of faults. They are 
good when you have thoroughly mastered them, but 
they are dreadfully pernicious when they have mastered 
you. So long as you are consciously speaking by 
rule, you will be hampered as really as if you were 
trying to walk in chains. You will be stilted, arti- 
ficial, and unnatural. To strive after eloquence for 
the sake of being eloquent, will destroy eloquence. 
No man ever yet became great or effective in speech 
until he lost consciousness of himself, and of every - 



* Mr. Spurgeon somewhere tells of a conversation between 
an eminent English surgeon and a French doctor, which may 
illustrate our meaning here. They were comparing notes regard- 
ing a certain very critical operation. The Frenchman averred 
that he had performed it more than three hundred times, while 
the Englishman said that he had attempted it only on eight occa- 
sions; " But how many did you save by it ?" inquired the English- 
man. "Oh, none at all!" was the answer; "but then the 
operation was brilliant !" "Ah !" replied the Englishman, " but 
I saved seven out of the eight." The salvation first I then let 
the brilliancy of the operation take care ol itself. 



20 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

thing else, in the one overmastering desire to move 
his hearers to adopt the course which he is advo- 
cating.* 

Here, as in the kindred pursuits of art and music, 
comes in that gospel of unconsciousness which Carlyle 
in one of his essays has so characteristically expounded. 
" Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while 
he talked with God,"f and evermore there is this same 
"wist not," when any one reaches the mountain-top 
of his peculiar power. He whose heart is so earnestly 
set on the salvation of men that he travails in birth 
of them " until Christ be formed in them," will, in 
addressing them, be eloquent, either according to rule, 
or in spite of rule, or above all rule ; but he who is 
desirous mainly of following some scholastic prece- 
dent will degenerate into a pulpit pedant. 

The effort to be eloquent will produce a rhetorician ; 
the concentrated purpose to move men to live for God 
in Christ, will produce, in the end, an orator, and the 



* The example of Mr. Jay, of Bath, in this respect, is most in- 
structive. u I always found," says that preacher, " one thing 
very helpful in the choice and in the study of my subjects. It 
was the feeling of a Tightness of aim and motive, i. e. a simple 
regard to usefulness, and a losing sight of advantage, popularity, 
and applause. This, it may be said, is rather a moral than an 
intellectual auxiliary. Be it so. But we know who has said, 
■ When thine eye is single thy whole body shall be full of light/ 
And is not even reputation itself better and more surely acquired 
when it follows us, than when it is pursued?" — Jay 's Autobi- 
ography, p. 140. 

t Exodus xxxiv. 29. 



DESIGN OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 2 I 

two are as far from each other as the poles. * Young 
men, " covet earnestly the best gifts, yet show I unto 
you a more excellent way." Seek men, not the repu- 
tation of eloquence or the incense of applause. Let 
your motto be the words of McAll, " I do not want 
their admiration, I want their salvation ; " and as you 
labor thus for their best interests, wrestling with God 
for them, and with them for God, you will be led to 
the best methods in a natural way, and eloquence will 
come before you are aware of it, bringing its attestation 
with it in the persons of those who have been, under 
God, transformed and transfigured by your instru- 
mentality. 

Thus again, we come round to the truth which I 
wish to strike as the key-note of these addresses, that 
SELF-RENUNCIATION IS THE ROOT OF EXCELLENCE. 
It is told of Pousa, the Chinese potter, that, being 
ordered to produce some great work for the em- 
peror, he tried long to make it, but in vain. At 
length, driven to despair, he threw himself into the 
furnace, and the effect of his self-immolation on the 
ware, which was then in the fire, was such that it 
came out the most beautiful piece of porcelain ever 
known.f So in the Christian ministry, it is self-sacri- 
fice that gives real excellence and glory to our work. 
When self in us disappears, and only Christ is seen. 



* Paraphrasing" the words of Professor Blackie, wo might say 

here, u One may as well expect to make a great patriot ol a 
fencing-master, as to make a great orator out oi a more rhetori- 
cian." See Blackie on Self-Culture, p. t8. 
t See Harper's Magazine for September, 1875, p, 502, 



22 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

then will be our highest success alike in our own lives 
and in the moving of our fellow-men. We get near to 
the secret of Paul's greatness, when we hear him say, 
" According to my earnest expectation and my hope 
that Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it 
be by life or by death ; " * and in the measure in which 
we imbibe his spirit, we shall rise to his efficiency. 
The worker, equally with the work, must be offered 
up in sacrifice to Christ, if at least the work is to be 
worthy of Him and of His cause. 



* Philippians i. 20. 



LECTURE II. 

THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



LECTURE II. 

THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 

"1 FAYING glanced at the nature and design of the 
J — ■- work to which the preacher has consecrated him- 
self, we are now ready to inquire what are the pre- 
requisites to an efficient ministry. 

And here, I take for granted that the preacher is 
himself a sincere and earnest Christian, and that he 
will constantly seek the co-operation with him of the 
Spirit of God. These are first principles with us ; 
and, if I do not dwell upon them so fully as upon 
others which I shall presently name, do not suppose 
that I hold them to be less important. On the con- 
trary, they are of the greatest moment. They are 
paramount and indispensable. But then, they are al- 
ready recognized as such by you, for you are not here, 
I am persuaded, without having felt how essential these 
things are to the life and power of your ministry. At 
all events, if you have not that conviction, the kind- 
est thing I can say to you is, " Go no farther until T 
you get it." 

It is only light that can enlighten. It is only fire that 
can kindle flame. Hence if we would illuminate others, 
we must have light in ourselves ; and if we would kin- 
dle the flame of piety in the hearts of others, we must 

2 (2=0 



26 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

take the " live coal " with which we do so, from the 
burning u altar " of our own spirit. Even the heathen 
poet could say, " Si vis me flere dolendum est primum 
ipsi tibi." If we be ourselves uninterested, how can 
we expect to interest others ? if we be ourselves in- 
sincere, how can we hope to bring others to the faith ? 
if we be ourselves cold, passionless, and dull, how 
can we expect to rouse others to enthusiasm? 

But, even personal sincerity will not avail without 
the co-operation of the Holy Ghost, and so the con- 
nection between prayer in the closet and power in the 
pulpit is of the closest sort. He preacheth best who 
prayeth best. Prayer is to the minister what the min- 
strel's music was to Elisha, it prepares his soul for the 
descent of the Holy Ghost upon him, and where He 
is, there is power. Hence, the minister who neglects 
prayer, does, in his sermon, but lay Gehazi-like a cold 
staffupon the face of the dead ; and there is no quicken- 
ing result. It is only when, in the fullness of our love 
for souls, and in the boldness of our faith in God, 
we, as it were, stretch ourselves over them, and 
wrestle with Him on their behalf, that we become to 
them the conductors of new life. Ezekiel's prophe- 
sying produced a shaking among the bones, and an 
external readjustment of them each to each, but it 
was the breath of the Lord in answer to his prayer 
that gave them life. When, therefore, God pours out 
upon the minister the spirit of prayer, that is the 
prophecy of a coming revival in his church. 

These are things most surely believed among us, 
and I have mentioned them now only that I may pre- 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



27 



vent them from being consigned to what Coleridge* 
has called " the dormitory of the soul," and may keep 
them from lying bed-ridden there " side by side with 
the most exploded errors." 

But I do not dwell longer upon them now ; neither 
do I enlarge upon the necessity of that literary and 
theological training which it is the proper business 
of college and seminary to furnish. I would only say, 
that in the interests of your future usefulness, you 
will make a fatal mistake if you neglect to improve 
to the fullest possible extent the advantages which 
as students you here enjoy. Sometimes the tempta- 
tion may suggest itself to you, that as your main 
business in after-life will be that of preaching, you 
may safely put your present class duties aside for the 
purpose of devoting yourselves to preaching engage- 
ments. But such " raw haste" will be indeed " half- 
sister to delay." What you gain in the matter of 
practice will be more than lost in that of efficiency. 
Of course, I do not object to your fulfilling those 
appointments which may come in your way, provided 
your doing so does not abstract your attention from 
the work which you come here to perform. Give your 
first care to the discharge of the seminary duties. 
Fill up to the brim the ordinary channel of your 
student-work, and then let the overflow, if there be 
any, go to other engagements. This will be the true 
economy in the end. You have facilities here, in the 
shape of libraries, lectures, and advisors, the like of 



* "Aids to Reflection." Aphorism I. 



28 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

which in your after career you will never again enjoy. 
Use them, therefore, to the utmost, and by doing so, 
you will be " laying up for yourselves in store, a good 
foundation against the time to come." 

When you enter upon the work itself, you will find 
that it will demand all your time and energies, and if 
your lot should be cast, at length, in a large city with 
its ceaseless demands upon you, there will be no little 
difficulty felt by you in securing even so much seclu- 
sion as is required for the satisfactory preparation of 
your weekly discourses ; therefore, let this be your 
gathering time. Lay everything in this institution 
under tribute. Get the most you possibly can out of 
every class. Master every subject that is brought be- 
fore you ; and especially, master the original languages 
in which the Word of God was given, so that you may 
read them, not with the stammering hesitancy of one 
who barely knows their alphabets, but with the criti- 
cal appreciation of the scholar who recognizes the 
minutest niceties in their construction. Continually 
do I find myself in my work drawing upon the sav- 
ings, if I may so express it, which I accumulated in 
my student-life, and few regrets have been so bitter — 
alas ! that they are so unavailing — as those which I feel, 
when I reflect, that if I had only been wiser in my gener- 
ation then, I might have been much more useful and 
efficient now. Therefore, though I presume not to 
enter into the details of your studies, let me, from my 
own experience, impress upon you the importance of 
present devotion to your work here ; for though 
David, fresh from the sheep-fold, did such wonders 



THE PREPARATION OF TP1E PREACHER. 



2 9 



with his sling, every warrior is not a David, and for 
the average of men, it is better that they should sub- 
mit to the drill and discipline which will make them 
expert in the use of ordinary weapons. 

But, contenting myself thus with the merest refer- 
ence to these things, I would give special and pecu- 
liar emphasis to familiar acquaintance with the Scrip- 
tures, as one of the most important prerequisites to 
pulpit power. You are to be ministers of the Word ; 
and it is by the knowledge of the Scriptures that you 
are to be thoroughly furnished for your work.* The 
Bible is your text-book ? and that not in the sense of 
being a hunting-ground for texts, but in that of con- 
stituting the ground-work of your discourses. You 
are looking forward to be "pastors and teachers," 
and the very thing which you are to teach is the 
Word of God. You are to lead your people up to an 
intelligent apprehension of its meaning, and a cordial 
reception of its statements, and it will be impossible 
for you to do that if you are not yourselves masters 
of its contents. 

Moreover, the Bible is the great instrument of your 
power. The Spirit is in the word, as well as with the 
word. It carries its own evidence with it, and in the 
proportion in which you succeed in bringing your 
hearers face to face with its truthful and unflattering; 



* See 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17, where the furniture of the " man of 
God ''is said by Paul to consist in a knowledge oi' the Holy 

Scriptures. 



3 o THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

mirror, you will commend your utterances to their 
consciences in the sight of God. The great purpose 
of your office is to regenerate your hearers, and the 
one means which you are to employ for this, is " the 
Word of God which liveth and abideth forever." 
Herein you differ from those who are the exponents 
of a system of philosophy, and even from those who 
are the teachers of morality. Admirably has Bishop 
Wilberforce said, " That which is the object of philos- 
ophy is the accident of theology. It does not aim at 
answering speculative questions, doubts, and difficul- 
ties, though it does resolve them. It reveals the per- 
son of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
speaking at once to the highest reason ; to that 
which apprehends by faith and not by the mere exer- 
cise of the logical faculty ; to the will in its most se- 
cret recesses ; and to all the affections in their highest 
sealed fountains." And again, " Incidentally it is the 
only real and efficient system of morality ; but it is 
this only incidentally. Moral teaching by itself, with 
no insight and sanctions from without, from the true 
fountain-head of all being, is, amongst a fallen race, 
little better than mental and spiritual anatomy ; a pur- 
blind poring into the nauseous revelations of disease 
and death ; a groping darkly into the mechanism from 
which life has fled. Christianity is the bringing the 
mighty word of the Son of man to such an one, and 
saying in the strength of His Omnipotence to that 
dead corpse, ' Young man, I say unto thee, arise.' "* 

* " Addresses to Candidates for Ordination," by the late Rt. 
Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., pp. 48, 49. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



31 



Now, this Christianity is revealed to us in the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments — in the 
former, through type and prophecy ; and in the lat- 
ter, through history and exposition ; if, therefore, we 
are to teach it correctly and preach it effectively, we 
must be thoroughly acquainted with these books. 
As he who is to practice the healing art must have, 
so to say, at his fingers' ends, the whole principles of 
medicine, and be perfectly familiar with the nature 
and effects of the remedies which he is to prescribe ; 
or as he who gives himself to legal pursuits, should 
master the great authorities in his department ; so 
the preacher of the gospel should be like Apollos, 
" mighty in the Scriptures. " 

Understand, therefore, that I am not now pressing 
upon you the duty of using the Word of God for the 
purpose of fostering habits of devotion in your own 
souls ; though that, of course, you will not neglect. 
Neither am I enforcing upon you the importance of 
having your memories stored with its words, so that 
they may come at your bidding to strengthen and 
adorn your pulpit discourses. I am urging you to 
the systematic and continuous study of its books, 
that you may thoroughly familiarize yourselves with 
those truths in the proclamation of which your life- 
work is to consist. I wish you to have your minds 
so saturated with its spirit, that the first and most 
natural view you will take of any subject, will be the 
Biblical. 

Form your system of theology from its pages. Von 
cannot ^et on without having in your minds sonic 



32 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

systematic view of religious truth ; but go to your 
system through the Bible, and beware of reading the 
Bible merely through the spectacles of system. Be 
the slaves of no system ; but be always the docile 
disciples of the Word of God. That was an all-im- 
portant distinction which Whately drew, when he 
said : " A desire to have Scripture on our side, is one 
thing; the desire to be on the side of Scripture is 
quite another." Be it yours to find out which is the 
side of Scripture, and determine always to take that. 
Mark very carefully the perspective in which it places 
different truths, and when you preach these truths, 
be sure always to put them in the same relative posi- 
tion as that in which you found them in its pages. 

Read it as a whole, that you may have a compre- 
hensive survey of its contents. Read it inductively, 
that you may gather together into so many different 
centres all its utterances on particular matters of 
doctrine or duty. * Read it book by book, that you 
may discover the drift and purpose of each separate 
contribution which, under the guidance of the Spirit, 
each writer has made to its aggregate unity. Resolve 
that whatever else you read or leave unread, you will 



* As specimens of the kind of induction to which I here refer, 
let me mention the works of Smeaton and Crawford on the Atone- 
ment ; and as treating the same subject in a similar manner, but 
on a different principle of classification, the recent volume of Mr. 
Dale, of Birmingham. In this connection, also, I would direct 
attention to some of the sermons of Thomas Binney, in the vol- 
ume entitled " Sermons preached in the King's Weigh-house 
Chapel, London, 1829-1869." Macmillan & Co., 1869. 



THE PREPARATION OE THE PREACHER. 



33 



at least master that which is for you professionally, 
as well as experimentally, THE BOOK. And never 
imagine that you have perfectly possessed yourselves 
of all its treasures ; for, ever as you grow in intellec- 
tual vigor and in Christian experience, you will find 
that you have grown into the capacity of discovering 
just so much the more in its treatises and narratives, 
its sermons and its songs. 

When I was a student of theology, a cursory remark 
dropped by one of my beloved tutors, to the effect 
that " we read far too much about the Bible, and far 
too little in the Bible," was for me a word in season. 
It set me to such study of the Scriptures as I am now 
enforcing upon you, and if God has given me any 
measure of usefulness in my ministry, not a little of 
it has been due to my determination to become " well- 
instructed in the oracles of God." Other attainments 
w r ere beyond my reach. I had not the means of pur- 
suing studies in many departments which were open 
to my more fortunate contemporaries ; but this was 
at my hand, and so I gave myself to it, and for years 
I have been in the habit of gauging my mental growth 
by the clearer apprehension which I have gained of 
some portion of the Scriptures, than I had at the 
time when it was last under my consideration. 

You will see, therefore, that the acquaintance with 
the Word of God which I am recommending to you, 
is not that of the letter merely. I do not mean that 
you are to become such prodigies of memory, that if 
the whole Bible were to be destroyed, you could easily 
restore it. Neither do I wish you to be walking eon- 



34 



THE MINISTRY OF THE V/ORD. 



cordances, able at a moment's notice to give the chap- 
ter and the verse of every quotation that may be 
made in your hearing. What I desire is, that you 
should become as familiar with its modes of present- 
ing the truth, as you are with the text-books of your 
classes. And if you will be advised from my expe- 
rience, I would urge you to make your study of it 
*at first hand, and for yourselves. You will find many 
hand-books offered for your assistance, and many 
analyses of its teachings pressed upon your attention. 
But, in the first instance at least, make your own. 
For while you are prosecuting your investigation for 
one purpose, you will incidentally, and by the way, 
pick up a great many valuable things which other- 
wise you might never have seen. Besides, that which 
you discover for yourself, remains with you a perma- 
nent possession, while that which you take ready- 
made from the labors of another, is very speedily 
forgotten. " Search the Scriptures" then, my young 
brethren. It is an old injunction, but it is as impor- 
tant now as it was centuries ago. " Read, mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest " them, and you will grow into an 
efficiency as preachers which you could not otherwise 
acquire. 

Not without its lesson in this regard is that mar- 
velous spiritual movement which within the last two 
years has stirred Great Britain to its depths, as it has 
never been since the days of Whitefield and the Wes- 
leys, and which has begun under the same instrumen- 
tality in our own land. Here are plain, unlettered 
men, in many respects open to criticism in their meth- 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



35 



ods, yet blessed to the revival of multitudes, and to 
the conversion of still greater numbers ; and when 
you come to analyze their power — so far as it can be 
submitted to mere human analysis — much of it is 
found to consist in the fact, that they are skilled in 
the use of that Word of God, which is " quick and 
powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing 
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and 
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the hearts." * Let us learn 
from their example. Let us not prefer the " wisdom 
of words " to its words of wisdom. Let us teach our 
people to bow before its utterances, by the rever- 
ence which we ourselves manifest in its treatment. 
Yea, let us recognize the signs of the times in this 
particular, and as everywhere the people are hunger- 
ing for the Word, and do eagerly welcome it when it 
is faithfully and lovingly expounded to them, let us 
furnish ourselves for the demand that is thus made 
upon us, by gathering daily of its heavenly manna. 

Another prerequisite to success in the pulpit is a 
good knowledge of the human heart. The physician 
must understand, not merely the nature of the reme- 
dies which he is to employ, but also the symptoms 
and workings of the diseases which he desires to cure. 
He must "walk the hospitals" as well as study the 
pharmacopeia. Now, the gospel is a remedial meas- 
ure, and therefore it is essential that its preachers 



* Hebrews iv. 12. 



36 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

should be acquainted with the nature of man, as well 
as with the means which, as the instrument in the 
hands of God's spirit, he is to use for its transforma- 
tion and renewal. Hence, he who wishes to become 
an efficient minister, will be a diligent student of men. 
Begin here with yourselves ; for " as face answereth 
to face in a glass, so doth the heart of man to man." 
There are distinctive peculiarities, indeed, in each 
individual, but in their great outstanding characteris- 
tics, men everywhere are very much alike. Therefore 
you may safely take it for granted, that what you find 
in your own hearts, exists also in those of others. The 
burden of guilt which weighed so heavily on your 
consciences, will be found pressing also upon theirs, 
if only you can succeed in bringing them to that 
knowledge of God's law by which you were awakened 
to a sense of your sinfulness. The blood of Christ 
which cleansed you from your iniquities, will be as 
efficacious also in their cases, if they will apply it to 
themselves in simple faith. The struggle which you 
have continually to carry on with the evil principles 
that are yet within you, must be maintained also by 
them, and whatever is felt by you to be helpful in 
that holy war, will be welcomed, you may be sure, by 
them. The besetments which encircle you, will in 
some form or other environ them; the weaknesses 
which you feel so frequently, and in consequence of 
which you yield so often to temptation, will be felt 
by them ; and whatever has been to you the means 
of revival, will certainly prove restorative to them. 
The limitations within which you have to carry on 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



37 



your labor on the earth, and which mar so much the 
symmetry and completeness of your work, will be 
similar to those which they have often felt so galling 
to them, and everything which has tended to sustain 
and comfort you under your humiliation, will be 
equally valuable to them. They have their unsettle- 
ments and trials in life just as you have ; they have 
their emptyings from " vessel to vessel" just as you 
have ; they have their sorrows, and sicknesses, and 
bereavements just as you have ; and by telling them 
how you have been upborne, you " may be able to 
comfort them that are in any trouble, by the comfort 
wherewith you yourselves are comforted of God." * 

Thus alike in the matter of warning and in that of 
consolation, you will find that a strict watch over your 
own hearts and histories will give you signal power. 
The conflict with, and conquest over, one single bosom 
sin, will give you here an influence which you will 
seek in vain from any other quarter. Peter could 
never have written his first Epistle, which is so full 
of comfort to them who " are in heaviness through 
manifold temptations," if he had not himself known 
what it was to hang through days of darkness on 
the memory of his Master's loving look. And those 
are ever the most effective preachers to others who 
are speaking from their knowledge of their own hearts. 

On the day on which I was licensed as a preacher 
of the gospel, my father, who was then suffering from 
the disease of which he died, repeated to me a sen- 



* 2 Corinthians i. 4. 



38 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



tence which fifty years before he had heard in the . 
charge given at an ordination by an old pastor to 
the newly-installed minister. It was to this effect : 
" Preach to the hearts of your hearers, and that you 
may do that effectively, examine well your own heart, 
and whatever you find there, charge home upon them.' , 
Perhaps the circumstances in which this advice was 
repeated to me, tended to give it more importance 
than it really deserves. Yet, I am free to say, that it 
has very seldom been absent from my thoughts when 
I have been preparing for the pulpit ; and sometimes, 
when some one of my hearers has alleged that I was 
preaching most pointedly at him, I was, in reality, 
preaching most solemnly to myself; while on other 
occasions, I have been made the messenger of conso- 
lation to many, when I was seeking most earnestly 
for my own comfort. 

The poet has said that " one touch of nature makes 
the whole world akin," and a minister thrills his hear- 
ers most when they feel his nature touching theirs. 
There is something in the eye of a well-painted por- 
trait which makes every beholder think that it is 
looking at him, and that no matter at what point he 
stands. Now, this speaking from his own heart will 
give a similar power to the sermon of the preacher, 
and will make every hearer feel that it was meant for 
him. Know yourselves, then, and use that knowledge 
as a key for opening the hearts of others to your 
words. Let your own hearts and consciences always 
form a portion of your audience, and if you are af- 
fected, others will be also. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



39 



Have you observed how when God has called His 
greatest servants to some signal service, He has be- 
gun by giving them a thorough revelation of them- 
selves, through the unveiling of Himself to them ? 
Now it is Moses * at the burning bush, and when he 
has discovered his imperfections, the commission is 
given, " Go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach 
thee what thou shalt say." Now it is Gideon f at 
the threshing-floor, and when he has said, " O my 
Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel, behold my fam- 
ily is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my 
father's house ;" he is then in a fit state to receive 
the command, " Go, in this thy might." Now it is 
Isaiah % in the Temple filled with the glory of Jeho- 
vah, and when he has found out that he is " a man 
of unclean lips," and has received purification by fire 
from the altar, he is ready to offer himself to the call 
of the Lord, with the words of dedication, " Here am 
I, send me ! " Now it is Peter, § on the shore of 
Gennesaret, seeing the glory of the Lord through 
the miracle of the fishes, and crying, " Depart from 
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord," and then he is 
prepared for the reassuring words, " Fear not, from 
henceforth thou shalt catch men." The knowledge 
of his own heart, through and along with an experi- 
mental acquaintance with Christ — these are the 
mightiest elements of the preacher's power. I have 
seen a housemaid in one of our great hotels, take a 



* Exodus iv. 10. t Judges vi. 1 1 — 1 5. 

% Isaiah vi. 1-8. § Luke v. 1-16. 



40 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

skeleton-key and pass into every chamber in a spa- 
cious corridor, laying open the contents of each, and 
setting to work on its purification. Now, such a skele- 
ton-key is the knowledge of his own heart to the 
minister of Christ. It enables him to unlock the 
hearts of his hearers and enter into them, and turn 
out their hidden things, so that they cry, " Who told 
him all that ? he seems to be reading out the inner- 
most secrets of my soul." Who told him? It was 
Jesus, in the day when His divine light flashed into 
his soul, and let him see himself! 

But in this matter of the knowledge of human nat- 
ure, you will also gain much advantage from the 
study of the biographies which the Word of God con- 
tains. The history of the first temptation is repeated 
in every enticement to sin still, and the weaknesses 
even of such men as Abraham and Moses, Aaron and 
Elijah, Peter and Thomas, are continually reappear- 
ing among ourselves. Everywhere we may find those 
who, like Balaam, " love the wages of unrighteousness," 
while they seek to obey the letter of the divine pre- 
cept. Daily we are meeting with men whose great 
difficulty, when we urge them to a certain course, is 
that of the Jewish king, who said to the man of God, 
" But what shall we do for the hundred talents which 
I have given to the army of Israel?"'* and the class 
whom Demetrius so moved when he said, " Sir, ye 
know that by this craft we have our wealth,"f is not 
by any means extinct among us. There are too many 



* 2 Chron. xxv. 9. t Acts xix. 25. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 41 

still like Herod,* who are " very sorry, yet," for the 
sake of some fancied obligation to party, or to prom- 
ise, go and do what their consciences condemn. We 
have yet our Diotrepheses,f who " love to have the 
pre-eminence among the brethren/' as well as our 
Aquilas and Priscillas, who are our " helpers in Christ 
Jesus." But why need I enumerate individual in- 
stances ? You will find in the characters described in 
the Bible representatives of every phase of human nat- 
ure presently existing among ourselves, and so, if 
you wish to furnish yourselves fully for dealing with 
men in the momentous matter of the salvation of 
their souls, you will study well the portrait gallery of 
the Book of God. 

Let each biography here be to you a matter of sep- 
arate analysis, and let each character be regarded by 
you as the type of a class, specimens of which you are 
sure to meet with in your after lives. This will prepare 
you for the actual work of the ministry, not only by 
suggesting to you fruitful themes for your public dis- 
courses, but also by familiarizing you with the doub- 
lings and deceitfulnesses of that human heart, with 
which, as the preachers of the Gospel, you will have 
especially to do. 

In this department, also, you may be greatly bene- 
fited by the diligent study of the characters which 
are described in human literature. The pages o( his- 
tory will give you ample materials for coming to a 
decision as to the motives by which men in general 



*Mark vi. 26. t 3 John 9 ; Romans xvi 



42 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

are actuated ; for though the transactions which are 
there described are larger and more important than 
those in which the average of mankind are engaged, 
yet the principles by which they who took part in 
them were animated, are the same as those which are 
acted upon by the majority of men in the ordinary 
affairs of life. 

But better, perhaps, than any history, for the end 
which I am now setting before you, are the dramatic 
works of Shakespeare. To them, I, at least, must ac- 
knowledge my obligations, in the most emphatic 
manner. They came into my hands during my sec- 
ond session at the University of Glasgow, and opened 
up what was virtually a new world to me. For more 
than two years I devoted to them every minute of my 
leisure time. I read them not for the sake of the 
stories which they told, or the plots which they unrav- 
elled, but for the insight which they gave me into the 
workings of the human heart. I was especially fas- 
cinated with those plays which manifest the power 
of conscience ; and long before I knew of the writ- 
ings of Schlegel and Coleridge, I had made for myself 
an analysis of the characters of Macbeth, Richard III., 
Brutus, Hamlet, Iago, and others. The productions 
were crude enough, no doubt ; yet, the mere attempt 
at such work was valuable to me beyond most 
other things ; and to this day I look back with no or- 
dinary pleasure on the hours which I spent in such a 
delightful manner. 

It is not without a measure of trepidation, indeed, 
that I venture to mention this, for I have still vividly 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



43 



before my mind the consternation of my father, a 
worthy elder in the Presbyterian Church, when he 
discovered the nature of my studies at that time. 
Sitting up one evening until far past midnight at my 
favorite pursuits, I happened to burst into a long, 
loud laugh over a ludicrous passage which I was read- 
ing, and to make some noise by the movement of my 
chair. This disturbed my venerable parent in his 
slumbers, for my room was immediately over his, and 
in a few minutes I was confronted with the vision of 
a man in white, who, on finding out how I was en- 
gaged, very gravely said to me, " My man, if you are 
going to preach Christ's Gospel, you had better be 
doing something else at this time in the morning than 
reading a play-actor's books. " I fear, therefore, lest 
some exemplary Christian people may think that I am 
giving you perilous advice, when I recommend you to 
make yourselves familiarly acquainted with the char- 
acters which the great dramatist has so powerfully 
depicted. But I am reassured when I remember that 
if I err here, I err in good company, since I find that 
Dr. Guthrie wrote, " I never tire of reading Shakes- 
peare. I have always considered him the greatest unin- 
spired genius that ever lived ; and I remember how glad 
I was when reading the biography of Dr. Chalmers, to , 
find that he w r as of the same mind."* In spite, there- 
fore, of the prejudice which many friends entertain 
against the class of works to which Shakespeare's 



* Autobiography and Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D. Vol. 
II., p. 310. 



44 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

writings belong, I would urge you to make a study 
of these noble productions, for though occasionally 
you will meet with some things which indicate that 
according to his own plaintive confession, his nature 
had become " subdued to that it wrought in, like the 
dyer's hand."* Yet every candid critic must agree 
with Sir James Stephens when he says,f " In his soul, 
as in a mirror, were concentrated all the lights radiat- 
ing from every point of human observation, and from 
his soul as from a mirror these lights were reflected 
back in every possible combination of beauty and 
sublimity, of wisdom and wit, of pathos and humor." 
But while you avail yourselves of all these means of 
acquiring a knowledge of human nature, do not 
forget to mingle much among men themselves. 
Keep your eyes and ears open wherever you are, 
whether in the streets, or in the cars, in the ex- 
change, in the stores, or in the household, and be 
closely observant of everything which indicates 
or illustrates character. Seek to become acquaint- 
ed with persons in every profession and pursuit, 
and study especially the temptations to which they 
are most open, and the weaknesses which they most 
commonly manifest in their ordinary avocations. 
Beware, however, of prosecuting such investigations 
in a spirit of cynicism like that which comes out in 
the pages of Vanity Fair ; or with a view to the pro- 



* See his cxi. Sonnet. 

t Lecture on Desultory and Systematic Reading, by the Rt. 
Hon. Sir James Stephens, p. 25. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER, 45 

duction of such comic effects as those which have 
made the cartoons of Punch so famous. You stand 
upon a higher platform than that of the moralist or 
the satirist. Your mission is to be the helpers of 
your fellow-men into the life of peace and purity 
which Christ has revealed to them and made possible 
for them, and therefore all your observations must be 
made with a benevolence like that which " stirred " 
the spirit of the apostle when he passed through the 
streets of Athens, and marked how the city was 
" wholly given to idolatry,"* and with the view of 
leading them as he did, from the very inscriptions on 
their own idol-altars, up to the knowledge of the Lord 
Jesus. 

We can never hope to reach the excellence of the 
Redeemer Himself, yet it may not be irreverent to 
say here, that one of the sources of His power as a 
preacher, lay in the fact that " He knew what was in 
men."f He had " the tongue of the learned" that 
He should " know how to speak a word in season to him 
that is weary." % Hence, there was a perfect adaptation 
in His words to the characters and circumstances of His 
hearers. To some He would not fully " commit Him- 
self;" and He had one way of presenting His message 
to the formal Pharisee, and another to the weeping 
penitent. *He brought the same salvation to the ruler 
Nicodemus, and to the woman at the well of Sychar, 
but He approached each in the way that was best 
suited to gain His end with each ; while in His public 



* Acts xvii. 16. t John ii. 24, 25. % Isaiah 1. 4. 



46 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

addresses He rose with perfect naturalness from the 
occupations of men's daily lives to the contemplation 
of .things unseen and eternal. He called men at the 
receipt of customs to " follow " Him, and they obeyed 
by leaving their occupations and attending Him 
through His journeyings. It is ours to go to them still in 
their business pursuits, and persuade them to follow 
Him, while yet they sit at their accustomed work. So 
the nearer we can attain to that acquaintance with the 
human heart which He possessed, the more effective 
ever will be our appeals. In Him that knowledge 
was the omniscience of godhead, but in us it must be 
laboriously acquired by the observation of our fellows. 

To this then, gentlemen, give yourselves with all your 
earnestness. There is a way to every man's heart if 
you can only find it. Study him, therefore, until you 
discover it, and then enter in by it, and take posses- 
sion of him for your Lord. Let him feel and know- 
that you come to assist him in his conflict with him- 
self; that you are in alliance with those aspirations 
after something higher and nobler than he is, which 
are the strongest yearnings of his heart ; that you 
are desirous of helping him to withstand those tempta- 
tions with which every day he has to contend, and 
you will gain not his ear only, but his heart, almost 
before he is aware of it. 

On my way to the pulpit, and as a means of self- 
help, I spent a year in the editorial chair of a news- 
paper ; and I question if any of my college classes 
was more valuable to me, so far as my after life-work 
has been concerned, than the experience of dealing 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



47 



with men which I then obtained. If anybody wants 
to know human nature, all round, within and with- 
out, and through and through, let him be for a time 
the editor of a newspaper ! and if, as was the case 
with me, a contested election should happen to occur 
during his term of office, he will have ample oppor- 
tunity of studying every variety of character ! 

I was helped in this department also, by some time 
devoted to public teaching, a work in which the 
monotony of the class was varied by watching the 
peculiarities of the children, and sometimes, too, by 
the opportunity it gave of insight into the petty am- 
bitions and schemings of the parents. And though 
these observations were made in another land, I have 
not found that human nature in New York is differ- 
ent from that which manifests itself in Scotland. 

My advice to you in this matter, then, my young 
brethren, is that you should avail yourselves of every 
opportunity which offers itself, in your various en- 
gagements, for the study of your fellow-men. Be 
always taking notes, without seeming to do so, and 
let the results of your observations shape your public 
discourses. It makes little or no difference how you 
acquire it ; only somehow get a knowledge of your 
fellows, so that when you preach to them, you shall 
not seem to them like "one who beateth the air," 
but may speak as one who knows the difficulties with 
which they have to contend, and the dangers by 
which they are environed. " When I listen to some 
preachers/' said a ship-builder on the Tyne once, to a 
.minister of my acquaintance, ;k I can build a whole 



48 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

ship ; but this morning I declare I could not lay a 
single plate." "How was that?" asked my friend. 
" Because," was the reply, " you spoke like one who 
knew just what I needed, and I could not withdraw 
my attention from you for a moment." That is the 
sort of sermons which a knowledge of human nature 
and daily life, rightly applied, will enable you to 
preach, and which you ought always to try to preach. 
For I do not think that merchants, or indeed, for that 
matter, any class of busy, struggling men or women, 
receive nearly as much sympathy, encouragement, or 
assistance from the pulpit as they ought. The dis- 
courses they hear may be good enough as theological 
discussions, or as moral essays, or as beautiful illus- 
trations of some little facet of truth, but they do not, 
nearly so often as they should, touch the inner his- 
tories and experiences of men, living as we are doing 
now, and the reason is because the preacher is too 
frequently a respectable recluse, knowing little or 
nothing of the battle which human souls are daily 
fighting, in their homes, in the streets, or in their 
stores. Study men, therefore. Find out the "weights" 
by which they are hindered in their daily race, and 
the dangers to which they are most liable. Then 
preach so that the wave of your speech shall flow into 
their hearts and lift them up above the sandbanks on 
which the work of the week had left them stranded, 
and you will never be without their attention. Nay, 
as the week advances, they will long for the recurrence 
of the Sabbath that they may be strengthened through 
your ministry once more, and when the service is 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. ^ 

ended they will retire with the feeling that in spite 
of the down-dragging influences that are depressing 
them, there is something worth striving for after all, 
and with the resolution that they will begin anew to 
live for Christ. 

It is true, indeed, that as ministers, you will be your- 
selves removed from the sphere of many of the diffi 
culties with which men in business have to contend ; 
but your very exemption from these will enable you 
the better to help them, provided you know enough 
about them. As described by Mr. MacGregor, in one 
of his " Rob Roy " books,"* the process of adjusting 
the compasses on board ship in the river Thames, is 
something like this : The vessel is moored in the 
bight at Greenhithe, and by means of warps to cer- 
tain government buoys, she is placed with her head 
towards the various points of the compass, one after 
another. The bearing of her compass on board, in- 
fluenced as that is by the attraction of the iron she 
carries, is taken accurately by one observer in the 
vessel, and the true bearing is signalled to him by 
another observer on shore, who has a compass out of 
reach of the local attraction of the ship. The error 
in each position is thus ascertained, and the necessary 
corrections are made. Now in the church your people 
are like that observer on board ship. Their con- 
sciences have been all the week affected by the in- 
fluence of things immediately around them, so that 

* The reference is to "The Voyage Alone In The Yawl Rob 
Roy," but I have not the volume at hand and cannot quote the 
page. 

3 



jo THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

they are in danger of making serious mistakes even 
in their reading of the book of God. But in the pul- 
pit, you are like the observer on shore. You are 
away from the magnetic agencies — mostly metallic — ■ 
which so seriously affect them, therefore you can signal- 
ize to them their " true bearings," and thus prepare 
them for the voyage of the week that is to follow. You 
can read the directions of God's Word with an un- 
biased mind, while from your acquaintance with their 
circumstances, you will know what directions they 
need for their daily guidance. Get such a knowledge, 
my young brethren, on the one hand of the book of 
God, and on the other of the characters and sur- 
roundings of men, as will enable you thus to be of 
service to them, just where they are, and you may 
be sure that you will always have numerous, inter- 
ested, and grateful hearers. 



LECTURE III. 

THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER — CONTINUED. 



LECTURE III. 

THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER, CONTINUED. 

A MONG those things which are needed to the 
-*- ■*- furnishing of a successful preacher, I would give 
an important place to the study of the zvorks of stand- 
ard authors, Paul said to Timothy, " Give attendance 
to reading," and the advice is even more needed in 
modern times than it w T as in the days in which he 
lived, for now " many are running to and fro, and 
knowledge has been increased. " If the minister is to 
be a leader of men, he must keep ahead of them, or 
at least abreast with them in ordinary intelligence, 
for, if they detect him blundering in matters of his- 
tory, philosophy, or literature, or if they discover that 
he is comparatively ignorant in these departments, 
they will have little respect for his opinions and small 
confidence in his judgment, even when he is speaking 
to them of things that lie within his proper province. 
But, over and above this negative advantage, the 
effort to master the writings of great thinkers will 
strengthen your own minds, while the truths which 
they proclaim, will suggest to you trains of thought 
which otherwise might never have occurred to you. Ab- 
solute originality, nowadays, is all but an impossibility. 
The most we can hope lor is that we shall be able to 

(53) 



54 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

give freshness and point to our own thinking, as we 
go over the subjects on which men have exercised 
their intellects from the beginning until now ; and, 
for my part, I know no method by which that can be 
secured more thoroughly than by the wise use of 
good books. 

Some, indeed, have affected to despise their assist- 
ance, but the result of such a course is, in most in- 
stances, mental barrenness. We all know how stimu- 
lating it is to come into contact with a great man. 
His talk is extraordinarily helpful. There is that in 
his words which makes them seminal and germinant, 
so that they take root in our minds and spring up, 
and bring forth fruit which is a joy to us, and a bene- 
fit to those with whom we share it. But a similar 
effect is produced in the diligent student by a great 
book. In reading such a production we are, as it 
were, listening for the time to the conversation of its 
author, on those subjects on which he was most at 
home, and we become possessed of that which if he 
had been questioned regarding it, he would have 
valued more highly than all his other attainments : 
thus, pigmies though we may be ourselves, in perus- 
ing the writings of those standard thinkers who have 
enriched the world with their works, we stand on the 
shoulders of earth's intellectual giants, and behold all 
that was visible to their searching gaze. Cultivate 
an acquaintance, therefore, with good books ; for as 
one has beautifully said : " They are the masters who 
instruct us without rods or anger ; if you approach 
them, they are not asleep ; if you inquire of them, 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER, 



55 



they do not hide themselves ; they do not chide if 
you err ; they do not laugh if you are ignorant. It 
matters not in what mood we are, they are ever the 
same ; Milton's Paradise knows no winter ; and the 
bells of Bunyan's New Jerusalem are always ringing 
joy." * 

But you cannot read every book, and it would not 
be desirable that you should do so, even if you could. 
Here, therefore, selection is necessary, and for making 
that, no better direction can be given you than that 
addressed the other day by Dean Stanley to the stu- 
dents of the University of St. Andrews : " Read the 
great books, and let the little ones take care of 
themselves." Richard Cecil said: "I have a shelf in 
my study for tried authors ; one in my mind for tried 
principles, and one in my heart for tried friends." 
Now there are certain tried books, which by common 
consent have been placed apart from all others in our 
language, and elevated to a quasi-peerage in our litera- 
ture ; and these you ought to study, not through the 
medium of abridgments or other make-shifts, but in 
the original productions. What these are will imme- 
diately suggest themselves to you in connection with 
the departments to which they severally belong, and 
I will not stay to attempt to enumerate them ; but I 
may say that it would not be creditable to any minis- 
ter using our mother tongue, if he were ignorant of 
Shakespeare and Milton among the poets; Gibbon, 



* Religion : Its Influence on the Working Man at his Leisure, 
a Lecture by Rev. William Graham, Liverpool, p. 9. 



56 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Macaulay, and Motley among the historians ; Locke, 
Reid, Hamilton, and Mill among the philosophers; 
or Butler, Edwards, and Chalmers among the theo- 
logians. While in the various branches of natural 
science, after having made yourselves familiar with 
the elements, you will find it of advantage to go at 
once to the writings of those who are the acknowl- 
edged masters in each. 

But never forget that the manner of your reading 
is as important as the matter. Samuel Johnson used 
to say, " Whatever is worth doing at all is worth 
doing well." And if a book be worth reading at all, it 
should be perused with care and attention. Simple, 
however, as this statement looks, many never act 
upon it. They are mere devourers of books, and so 
suffer from literary dyspepsia. They never attempt 
to digest and assimilate the thoughts of others, for 
their one care seems to be to get over the pages, so 
that they may add another to the list of works which 
they can say they have read. And there are multi- 
tudes more, who do not give even so much attention 
to them as that. They glance over the preface, read 
hurriedly the table of contents, dip here and there 
into the work itself, and then go away professing that 
they understand the whole. Dean Swift complained 
of some, in his day, that they did with books what 
others did with great Lords in the peerage, namely, 
learned their titles, and then went away and boasted 
of their acquaintance ; and it is to be feared that not 
a few are guilty of the same pretensiveness in our own 
times. Let it not be so with you. When you take 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 57 

up a work, resolve to understand it thoroughly. The 
ancients had a proverb — Cave hominem unius libri 
(Beware of the man of one book) — in which they 
noted that he who had perfectly mastered one book 
w T as a tougher antagonist by far than the mere helluo 
librorum, who " bolts " books by the dozen, as a 
Dorset laborer " bolts bacon. " Thomas Fuller has 
quaintly said, " I judge of good housekeeping not by 
the number of chimneys, but by the smoke." So you 
may gauge your intellectual strength not by the 
number of books which you have perused, but by 
that of those which you have digested and made 
your own. One standard author, pored over until he 
has become a part of ourselves, will do more for the 
cultivation of our minds than a whole library super- 
ficially glanced at. ^ 

And that you may know what I mean by thorough 
reading, let us take the case of such a work, 
for example, as " Butler's Analogy." As you lift 
the volume, you must be warned not to expect 
that you have an easy task before you. There is 
very little that is pleasing in the style, and there is 
much that is intricate and involved in the argument, 
so that you must keep yourselves constantly alert, 
and make every sentence a study. But if you will 
only prosecute your investigation with wisdom and 
perseverance to the end, you will rise from the perusal 
of that book with a sense of satisfaction such as rarely 
fills the soul. No doubt authors, since Butler's day, 
have so drunk into his spirit and developed his views, 
that, unconsciously to ourselves, we have on many 

<7* 



58 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

subjects been breathing the atmosphere which he 
created, and this may prevent us from having the 
same sense of novelty in the study of the " Analogy" 
as those must have felt who first read its pages, but 
still, he was to ethics and Christian evidences al- 
most what Bacon and Newton were to the physical 
sciences ; and much that is best in our moral philos- 
ophy and theology for the past hundred years, is but 
the development of " way-side seeds " which fell from 
his full hand as he went forth to sow in the field 
which he had chosen. But, more than most other 
books, the "Analogy" is a study, and to master it 
thoroughly, you must take it by degrees. Read a 
chapter at a time, carefully marking on the margin the 
various steps of the closely-compacted argument, 
and at the close comparing your own analysis with 
the summary which he himself gives at the end of 
each section. In this work, as well as in weighing 
the precise force or estimating the legitimateness of 
his several arguments, you may receive some useful 
hints from the notes in Bishop Fitzgerald's admirable 
edition, and also from the criticisms of Chalmers on 
each chapter, which are to be found in one of the 
volumes of his posthumous works. Thus furnished, 
you will make your way slowly, but surely, along ; 
and when you reach the end, you will have become 
so accustomed to the style and method of reasoning, 
that you will be able to return and reperuse the 
earlier portions of the work, not only with ease, but 
also with positive enjoyment. Such a book, so 
studied, will make a man a thinker, and " set him up" 
in philosophy and theology for life. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. $g 

Other examples might be given, but this must suf- 
fice ; and, from my own experience, I feel warranted 
in saying that, if you will only set about something 
of this kind, with some of our standard books, it will 
do more for you in the way of furnishing you with 
mental strength for the pulpit than all the education 
of all the schools.* I do not prescribe any particular 
method, only let it be understood to be essential that 
in some way meditation should be secured along with 
reading. What mastication and digestion are to food, 
in the process of the nourishment of the body, that 
meditation is to reading, in the development of the 
mind. Hence it was a good rule which was given by 
a scholar to a friend, f " Proportion an hour's reflec- 
tion to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book 
into the student." And your own Dr. Dwight often 
said that the weakness of his eye-sight was attended 
with this advantage, that it compelled him to think 
much. 

It is a good plan to compare notes on your read- 



* To those who wish more minute directions on this subject, I 
would recommend the lecture of Dr. Channing on " Self-Cul- 
ture," to be found in his collected works ; also the recent valuable 
little book of Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh, on " Self- Culture," 
and the exhaustive and everyway admirable treatise of President 
Porter on " Books and Reading." Willmott's " Pleasures, Ob- 
jects, and Advantages of Literature," though sketchy and in 
some degree fragmentary, is often very suggestive ; and the 
chapter on Books in Mr. Emerson's "Society and Solitude" is 
full of nuggets of the purest gold. 

t Willmott, as above, page 38. 



60 THE MINIS TR Y OF THE WORD. 

ing with a brother, like-minded with yourself, and so 
m your daily walks you may combine the advantages 
of physical exercise with those of mental culture. In 
the early years of my Liverpool pastorate, I was 
greatly beholden to a beloved friend, still in the 
ministry in that town, whose fine taste, extensive 
information, boundless humor, and kindly heart made 
our weekly conference along the shore of the Mersey 
a stimulus and a joy to me. Reading had made him 
a full man, and conference a ready man. I dare not 
add that writing had made him an exact man ; but 
he was to me one of the best of teachers, for he let 
me see how to get at the kernel of a book without 
breaking my teeth upon the shell.* 

But if, from the isolation of your position, you can- 
not have such brotherly assistance from another, then 
talk to yourself on the subject with your pen. Write 
a criticism of your own upon your author, and if you 
think him wrong on any point, try your strength 
against him, in the shape of an exposure of his error, 
and an enforcement of that which you believe to be 
the truth. This will be a capital intellectual exercise, 
even if no human eye should ever see your essay but 
your own ; while, perhaps, the sending of it to your 
author, f or the giving of it to the press in some 



* The reference here is to my much-loved brother, the Rev. 
William Graham, whose fellowship for sixteen years was one of 
the dearest privileges of my life. 

t The publication of his essay on the " Philosophy of the In- 
finite," in which, while yet a student, he criticised the system of 
Sir William Hamilton, has resulted in the elevation of Professor 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 6 1 

periodical, may often furnish stimulus or give direc- 
tion to your whole after-career. But, quocunque modo, 
anyhow, compel yourself to think on what you read, 
if you would make your reading minister to your 
pulpit efficiency. 

The remarks which I have just made have prepared 
the way for the announcement of the next prerequisite 
to ministerial efficiency on which I would insist, name- 
ly, the free and constant use of the pen in the work of 
original composition, I enter not now on the con- 
sideration of such questions as whether sermons 
should be written, and if so, whether they should be 
read from the manuscript or delivered memoriter or 
otherwise ; these will come up at a later stage ; mean- 
while, however it is to be with your preparations for 
the pulpit in after-days, I am disposed to insist upon 
it as positively essential to your success, that you 
should now acquire facility in writing. I do not care 
very much what subjects you may treat, or what the 
immediate object may be which you have in view, 
only I would urge it upon you with all the emphasis 



Calderwood to the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh ; and 
for the sake of the lesson which it points, I may be forgiven Un- 
saying that the writing, while I was but a youth of nineteen. 
of a review of an article which had appeared in the journal 
of Sacred Literature, and the sending of it to Dr. John Kitto, 
while he was the editor of that Quarterly, was my first entrance 
into the field of authorship. 1 wrote it for my own improvement, 
and sent it to him by the advice of others, much against my own 
inclination ; but when I saw it in actual type, the very letters 
danced before my eyes ! 



62 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

I can command, that you should accustom yourselves 
to composition. 

This will give definiteness and precision to your 
thinking. What you can write on any subject is 
really all that you know concerning it, and the char- 
acter of your composition will infallibly indicate the 
quality of your knowledge. The pen is a wonderful 
crystallizer, and if the work of meditation be suffi- 
ciently advanced, its employment will be all that is 
needed to give solidity and arrangement to your 
thoughts. If, however, your ideas are crude and ill- 
digested, your composition will be hazy and dis- 
jointed, and you will be tempted to make up for the 
lack of more valuable materials by the importation 
into it of high-sounding verbiage. Thus you may 
test with unerring accuracy the completeness of your 
thinking by the character of your style. When your 
words are clear, simple, strong, you are treading on 
ground with which you are familiar ; when your 
language is vague, indefinite, and obscure, you may 
depend upon it that you have not yet attained to a 
thorough understanding of your subject. Hence, 
even as a means of study, the use of the pen is indis- 
pensable. 

But copious composition is also valuable as minis- 
tering to readiness of expression. As preachers, you 
will have to discourse week by week to your hearers. 
Now whether your sermons are to be written or 
spoken merely from careful thinking beforehand, you 
will equally need facility in the art of clothing your 
ideas in words. If you write your discourses, then 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER, 63 

you will never get through your work, if you should 
proceed, as his friends used jokingly to say John Foster 
did, at the rate of a sentence a day. If, again, you 
are to speak from premeditation merely, then, unless 
you have acquired the habit of easily giving verbal 
shape to your thoughts, you will be hesitating and 
hampered in your utterance, or you will be borne 
along by a fatal fluency, in which reiteration will take 
the place of argument, and sound will be made to 
serve for sense. The only preventive against these 
dangers lies in acquiring the habit of giving definite 
expression to your thoughts by frequent composition. 
It will not come of itself. It is the result of practice, 
for, as Pope has said : 

" True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, 
As those move easiest who have learned to dance." 

Let the pen, therefore, be always in your hand, or at 
your hand, and seek to acquire the art of expression 
so thoroughly that when you have a thought to utter, 
the language appropriate for its communication will 
come to you as naturally as, when you are writing 
a word, the letters required for the spelling of it 
rise to your remembrance. 

Aim at the securing of a style which shall 
present your thoughts forcibly, clearly, and elo- 
quently to the minds of your hearers ; and do not 
suppose that you can accomplish that without long 
and laborious practice. Cultivate acquaintance with 
the writings of those who have been famous for this 
peculiarity; for, as one can acquire the manner- 



64 THE MIXISTR V OF THE WORD. 

good society only by mixing in it, so we can catch 
the ease and elegance of a good style only by read- 
ing first-rate authors. I do not mean, of course, that 
you are to imitate them in your compositions, but 
merely that from the insensible influence of their 
example upon you, their beauty and simplicity may 
repeat themselves through you. No one will charge 
John Bright with imitation. He is the most natural 
of orators ; and yet, when we are told that for many 
years he has been in the habit, before retiring to rest 
after the excitement of a night in the House of Com- 
mons, of reading for an hour from one of the poets, 
taking a new one each winter, and that he has thus 
gone over most of the classic poetry of his native 
land, w T e think we have discovered one of the factors 
which have gone to produce that wonderful com- 
bination of simplicity and power, of beauty and 
strength, by which his speeches are distinguished. 

Seek to get the best words and to put them in the 
best places. Yet do not suppose that the biggest are 
necessarily the best. The vice of much of the writing 
in these days in newspapers, periodicals, and even in 
sermons, is pretensiveness. The authors are ambitious 
to show their learning, and common words, which are 
common simply because they are the most expressive 
and intelligible, are treated as if they were vulgar, and 
forced to give place to others which have nothing but 
their learned origin or their unusual length to recom- 
mend them. Remember that in every sort of com- 
position perspicuity is more than half the battle, and 
that a meaning which does not stare a man in the 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 65 

face is as bad as no meaning at all, since he will most 
likely never trouble himself to attempt to discover it. 
Let your rule be to write not merely in such a way as 
to be understood, but rather so plainly that it will be 
impossible for any one of average intelligence to mis- 
understand you. Guthrie* tells us that an intelligent 
member of his first congregation at Arbirlot declined 
to take a second volume of Chalmers' works out of 
the library of the parish, on the ground that he had 
to look up for the meaning of so many of that author's 
words in the dictionary, and very often did not find 
them there, after all. Let not the lesson of such an 
incident be lost upon you. Choose the simplest and 
most familiar terms, and if at any time a word should 
recommend itself to you because of its novelty or its 
rarity, draw your pen through it, and put in its place 
the plainest substitute you can command. Never say 
" hebdomadal " when you mean " weekly/'f and do 
not lament that men have " perverse proclivities to 
prevarication," when you might express the same 
thought in FalstafPs words, " Lord, how this world is 
given to lying." Abjure all technical terms which, 
however familiar they may be to you, are utterly un- 
known to those who shall be your hearers. If you 
wish to remind men that conscience is God's voice 
within the soul, do not say, as I heard a young 
preacher say last year, that " conscience has its roots 



* "Autobiography and Memoirs," Vol. I., p. 130. 

t See further on this point, "The Preacher's Lantern," Vol. 
II., pp. 606-615. 



66 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

in the soil of the absolute." All these modes of 
expression look very learned, but they are in reality 
only ridiculous. The end of communicating our 
thoughts to others is, that they may be moved there- 
by to purer and nobler lives ; but, to secure that end, 
they must understand our words. And " I had rather 
speak five words with my understanding, that by my 
voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand 
words in an unknown tongue."* 

Be not allured, either, by high-sounding adjectives. 
The business of an epithet is to give prominence to 
some quality the mention of which is needed to bring 
fully before the hearer's mind the matter of which we 
speak. But, as commonly employed by writers and 
preachers, adjectives are the merest expletives. They 
are inserted to ballast, or balance, the clauses of an 
antithesis, or to give padding to an ill-constructed sen- 
tence. They have an appearance of strength, but they 
are really the evidence of weakness. They are the in- 
flated currency of rhetoric. Wealth of speech consists 
not in them, but in the ringing gold of thought. Use 
them only when there is something in the thought that 
corresponds to them ; and when you come to ask 
yourselves concerning each, " Is this absolutely need- 
ful to express my meaning ? " you will be surprised 
to discover how seldom they are required. In fact, 
it might be a good thing if one could have a waste- 
basket by his side, into which he could throw three 
out of every four epithets that rise to his pen. They 



* I Corinthians xiv. 19. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 67 

give an exaggerated character to one's style, as if all 
the while he were straining on tip-toe or walking upon 
stilts. Nay, worse than all, they are many times false, 
and the employment of them is apt to foster an un- 
reality in our speech, w T hich is akin to hypocrisy in 
conduct. There is an ethical element in composition 
as in other things, and Ruskin's canons in regard to 
architecture hold equally in the building of our ser- 
mons and other compositions. Let your style be 
true to your thought — that is, let it be a clear 
medium for the transmission of your thought — and 
then the individuality of your thinking will character- 
ize its expression also. 

Take heed also of circumlocution. Go straight at 
your thought. When a man is in earnest, he will 
take the shortest way. Sometimes, indeed, it may 
be well to detain the mind of the auditor over your 
statement for a moment or two by judicious amplifi- 
cation, and so make sure that it is perfectly under- 
stood ; for, as Whately has said, bulk is necessary to 
digestion. Occasionally, too, one may indulge in that 
sort of reiteration for which Chalmers was remarkable, 
provided he can make it, as Chalmers did, the whirl- 
ings of the sling, which give swiftness to the stone 
that he is about to launch from it ; but, in general, 
the briefest and most direct expression we can give 
to our meaning is the best. Go forward steadily 
toward your goal, and keep just a little way ahead 
of your hearers. Do not gallop so quickly that they 
shall have difficulty in keeping up with you, and do 
not loiter so long over the flowers by the way-side or 



68 THE MINISTR Y OF THE WORD. 

with the travelers whom you may chance to meet 
upon the road, that they shall be tempted to go on 
before you. 

All this will require much study on your part, while 
yet you may get from the unthinking but little credit 
for your toil. That which by dint of patient effort 
you have made easy for others to comprehend, will not 
appear to them to be great. The clear is not often 
counted deep, and the " drumley " is very frequently 
reckoned profound. But then, that will be of no con- 
sequence to you if you be a true minister of Christ, 
for you have crucified self, and what is a reputation 
for learning or for depth to you if only you succeed 
in making plain to men the way of life, and persuad- 
ing them to walk therein? Set to work, therefore, 
with your pen, and labor on, in season and out of 
season, that you may acquire the habit of giving 
simple, effective, and direct expression to the thoughts 
that arise within you. 

Much I might say to you here from my own expe- 
rience, for the pen has been almost constantly in my 
hand since I was thirteen years of age, but I prefer 
to bring before you the history of one of the ablest 
preachers of his country and his age. You have all 
heard of Thomas Binney, late minister of the King's 
Weigh-house Chapel, London, — that Archbishop of 
English Nonconformity, as one might call him — who 
so nobly moulded much of the Christian thought and 
legislation of his times. A few years before his death, 
in addressing the young men of his church, he gave 
them this interesting autobiographic sketch : " You 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



69 



are all young men, engaged in business, but have to 
improve your minds as best you can in your leisure 
hours. Well, I was once in the same position. I was 
seven years in a bookseller's concern, and during that 
time my hours were, for two years, from seven A. M. 
to eight P. M., and for five years from seven to seven ; 
under great pressure, I have sometimes been engaged 
from six A. M. till ten P. M. But, somehow, all the j 
time, and especially from my fourteenth to my twen- 
tieth year, I found opportunities for much reading 
and a great deal of composition. I did not shirk, 
however, my Latin and Greek, for I went for some 
time two evenings in the week to an old Presbyterian 
clergyman to learn the elements of the two languages, 
and could read Caesar and St. John. But my great 
work was English. I read many of the best authors, 
and I wrote largely both poetry and prose, and I did 
so with much painstaking. I labored to acquire a 
good style of expression as well as merely to express 
my thoughts. Some of the plans I pursued were 
rather odd, and produced odd results. I read the 
whole of Johnson's i Rambler,' put down all the new 
words I met with — and they were a good man}' — 
with their proper meanings, and then I wrote essays 
in imitation of Johnson, and used them up. I did 
the same with Thomson's ' Seasons,' and wrote blank 
verse to use his words and also to acquire something 
of music and rythm. And so I went on, sometimes 
writing long poems in heroic verse; one on the ' Be- 
ing of a God ;' another, in two or three books, in blank 
verse, in imitation of ' Paradise Lost.' I wrote essays 



yo THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

on the immortality of the soul ; sermons ; a tragedy, 
in three acts, and other things, very wonderful in 
their way, you may be sure. I think I can say I 
never fancied myself a poet or philosopher, but I 
wrote on and on to acquire the power to write with 
readiness ; and I say to you, with a full conviction of the 
truth of what I say, that, having lived to gain some 
little reputation as a writer, I attribute all my success 
to what I did for myself, and to the habits I formed 
during those years to which I have thus referred."* 

Few ministers had the power of Mr. Binney, wheth- 
er in the preaching of sermons from a manuscript or 
in extempore delivery ; and the foundation of much 
that he was and did was laid during these nights of 
work. But his experience is not by any means singu- 
lar. Many of his brethren alike in England and 
America have, like him, " while their companions 
slept," been " toiling upwards in the night ;" and 
something of the same self-discipline is essential to 
the success of any preacher. Go to work, then, young 
men, in a similar spirit, and very soon you will forget 
the labor in the delight which it will bring with it. 
Your interest will never flag ; your enthusiasm will 
never tire. Ever new beauties will open up before 
you ; ever new allurements will beckon you on ; for 
in such pursuits you will find what Milton has called 
" the hill-side where is the right path of a virtuous 
and noble education, laborious, indeed, at its first 



* " A Memorial of the late Rev. Thomas Binney, LL.D." 
Edited by John Stoughton, D.D., pp. 12, 13. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 



7* 



ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly 
prospect and melodious sound on every side, that the 
harp of Orpheus was not more charming."! 

All the things which as yet I have mentioned would 
be required, even if your business were to be the 

t moving of men through the press. But your special 
work is to be that of preaching. You are to seek to 
sway your hearers by the living voice, and for this 
you have opportunities such as are accorded to no 
other profession. By common consent your people 
will give up a portion of every Lord's day for the 
very purpose of placing themselves under your guid- 
ance. They will come to the house of assembly with 
minds and hearts, in some measure, already prepared 
to listen to your words ; but this, far from making you 
indifferent to the work of addressing them, will only 
spur you on to make the best of your opportunity. 
Accordingly, my treatment of the prerequisites to 
ministerial success would be signally incomplete, if I 
did not give prominence to the acquirement of facility 
and distinctness in public speaking. Without that, 
the arch which you build will lack the key-stone, 
which gives stability to all the rest. Without that, 
the arrow which you have constructed with such skill, 

*and the bow which you have bent with such force, 
will be merely ornamental ; it is effective utterance 
alone which can place the one upon the other, and 
give to the polished shaft the full momentum of the 
bow, so that it shall go whizzing to its mark. 



t "Milton's Prose Works." Bonn's edition, Vol. III., p. 467, 



72 THE MINISTR Y OF THE WORD. 

I would not go so far as to say that articulate and 
earnest delivery is everything in a sermon ; for truth 
is in words as well as in manner, and far more in the 
former than in the latter. Yet it is undeniable that 
effective utterance will give force even to a feeble ser- 
mon ; while careless, hesitating, and indistinct speech, 
will make the finest composition fall flat and power- 
less upon the listeners' ears. In itself the manner 
may be far less important than the matter ; but it is 
valuable, as giving its full force to the matter, and 
ought not to be lightly esteemed. You will do well, 
therefore, to cultivate elocution. But here, as in 
other things, you must be on your guard against arti- 
ficiality. What you have to do is not to imitate an- 
other, but to cultivate yourselves. Do not covet 
" the stare and stark theatric practiced at the glass," 
but aim rather to cure yourselves of any awkward- 
nesses that may adhere to you, and to acquire any 
qualities in which you may be deficient. Do not 
make yourselves into lay-figures, which are the paint- 
er's poor substitutes for living men, but be yourselves, 
only yourselves, purged from your faults, and clothed 
with as much power as you can acquire by laborious 
exercise. 

Seek first distinctness of articulation. Do not 
mistake loudness for clearness. No doubt a certain 
amount of volume is needed, if, as the phrase is, your 
voice would fill a large house. But hearers generally 
will tell you that they follow a speaker better when 
he is addressing them in moderate tones, than when, 
in impassioned mood, he is exerting his voice to the 



THE PREPARATION OE THE PREACHER. 



73 



uttermost. The true secret here is to take sufficient 
time, and to give to every consonant its own proper 
sound. The vowels can take care of themselves. It 
is a mistake, therefore, to dwell, as some do, at inor- 
dinate length upon them. Such a habit always pro- 
duces indistinctness. It is the province of the conso- 
nants to embank and confine the river of sound which 
a vowel makes, and if you do not keep them in good 
repair, the vowel will, overflow so as to inundate the 
ear of the hearer, and make him unconscious of every- 
thing besides. They who are conversant with theat- 
rical matters, tell us that by merely attending to this 
rule, an actor will make his slightest whisper audible 
to all in the building ; and though our churches gener- 
ally — the more's the pity — are not so well constructed 
for acoustical purposes as the theatres, yet by following 
this method, you may greatly increase your effective- 
ness, without making any larger expenditure of force. 
Again, be not too rapid in your utterance. Do not 
put your hearers out of breath in their effort to keep 
up with you. This is the common vice of young ora- 
tors. Therefore, be on your guard against it. Be 
not too slow either. But let your speed be regulated 
by the nature of that which at the moment you arc 
saying. If you are laying down an important princi- 
ple, then take time to give it weight ; if you are pros- 
ecuting an intricate argument, then go forward leis- 
urely, that your hearers may mark well every slop. 
But if your are nearing your goal, and feel that you 
have thus far carried all before you, then give yourself 
full swing and rush on until you reach it. 
4 



74 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Cultivate the art of appropriate emphasis. Do not 
let your sermons be like the letters of a school-miss, 
in which every other word is underscored. But study 
how to mark by the voice, the various points which 
need to be thereby denoted for the hearer's attention. 
Observe how in ordinary speech one unconsciously 
punctuates his sentences with emphasis, and seek to 
do the same in addressing your people. Above all, 
shun monotony as you would the plague. It is bad 
for the voice ; it is bad, also, from its reflex influence 
on the composition of your sermons, for if you speak 
on a dead level, you will come at length to think on 
a dead level ; and it is especially bad, from its soporific 
effect upon the audience. Rest your voice by vary- 
ing skillfully its tones ; give direct narrative in an 
easy and familiar style. Rise to a higher note when 
you become admonitory. Let pathos and solemnity 
be marked by the seriousness of your tone. Pause 
a moment and change your key when you wish to 
introduce an illustration ; and as you pass from one 
division of your subject to another, give your hearers 
time to gather themselves up again before you make 
a new demand upon their attention. 

For this purpose you will need thorough self-posses- 
sion ; and nothing but practice will give you that. 
Have yourself well in hand, so that you can always 
command your powers ; and beware of letting your- 
self be carried away, up into some shrieking falsetto, by 
which for the whole remainder of your discourse your 
voice will be destroyed. 

It is easier to give you these counsels than it is to 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. 75 

follow them. But drill and culture will do much. 
Read frequently aloud. Embrace every opportunity 
that offers, whether in the debating society, or else- 
where, for the practice of speaking. Be your own 
most remorseless critic ; and lay well to heart the ad- 
monitions of any friend whose love to you permits 
you to see yourself through the eyes of one who is 
deeply interested in your welfare. Be not discouraged 
though the work be arduous, for so long as the story 
of Demosthenes and the pebbles shall be told, no one 
needs despair. His perseverance in these details, in- 
deed, did not make him an orator, but it did enable 
him to overcome defects of utterance, w\hich would 
have made all his other powers comparatively worth- 
less, so far as eloquence was concerned. You may 
not attain his greatness, but, by perseverance, his ex- 
ample warrants you to hope that you may acquire 
distinctness and energy of speech. 

I have dwelt so long on these points, that I have 
left myself but little space to speak of one prerequi- 
site to pulpit efficiency, which is as important as the 
others, but which now I can do little more than 
name. I mean that quality which we call common 
sense. Alas! how many preachers otherwise admira- 
bly equipped have failed for lack of that ! And yet it 
is difficult to give a definition of it. We may describe 
it as an intuitive perception of the fitness of things, 
so that he who is endowed with it will always do that 
which is appropriate to the circumstances. It is dif- 
ferent from caution, or what is generally know n as pru- 



76 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

dence ; inasmuch as that is the result of calculation, 
while common sense is rather an immediate percep- 
tion. It keeps a man from making, as people say, a 
fool of himself, either by stupid speech in the pulpit, 
or by ridiculous conduct out of it. The breach of it 
may not be precisely an immorality, but it is an inde- 
corum, the commission of which stamps him at once 
as an ass. He who lacks this quality has no right to 
be a minister, for he turns the most sacred things into 
a laughing-stock, and makes a burlesque of the office 
itself. 

Nor can this defect be easily supplied. The story 
goes that when a Scottish farmer went to his pastor to 
consult him as to sending his son to college with a view 
to his becoming a minister, the good maa sought to 
dissuade him from his purpose, and on being asked for 
the reason, said, " I tell you, man, he wants common 
sense. Now, if a man want wealth he may get that ; 
if he want learning, he may get that ; if he want the 
grace of God, he may get that ; but if he want common 
sense, he'll never get that." This witness is true ; al- 
beit, the youth concerning whom these words were 
said, was very far indeed from having no common 
sense, for he was none other than George Lawson, who 
afterwards became distinguished as a professor of the- 
ology, and was known over all the country as a Chris- 
tian Socrates. Still, it is true, that common sense 
cannot be acquired. Yet in those who have it, it may 
be cultivated and increased ; and presuming that you 
already possess it, let me urge you to give good heed 
to its suggestions. 



THE PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER. ^7 

Do not set yourselves to shock the feelings of 
your hearers by your wanton defiance of all their 
prepossessions, or if you will, their prejudices. 
Become all things to all men, that you may by 
all means save some. A mountebank may be in 
his place in the ring of the circus, but he has no busi- 
ness in the pulpit ; and all the learning he may pos- 
sess, or all the eloquence he may display, will not' 
make amends for the lack of propriety which he 
evinces. I know that some will be ready to fling at 
me the quotation about being " content to dwell in 
decencies forever." But I protest that it is not need- 
ful to be dull in order to be decent ; and I altogether 
deny that in order to do men good, one must put on 
the cap, and ring the bells of the fool. " It is pitiful 
to court a grin, when we should woo a soul ;" and, 
however much one may enjoy the witicisms of the 
clown in other places, common sense says that the 
preacher, with the Word of God before him, and im- 
mortal souls seeking life and comfort at his lips, should 
be at least serious. 

But I may not conclude without reminding you, 
that even these prerequisites which I have enumera- 
ted, will not make a preacher. I do not believe that 
anyone can rise to the highest efficiency in the pulpit 
without them, but still alone they will not suffice. 
They must be all vitalized and concentrated on one ob- 
ject by the consecration of the man to the service oi 
Christ, and of his fellow-men in the work oi the min- 
istry. They are the separate strands, but they must 



78 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

be spun together into one by the intense love which 
the preacher has, on the one hand for the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and on the other for human souls. Thus 
" the cords of a man," manifold though they be, be- 
come unified into " the bond of love" wherewith the 
hearers are to be drawn to God. Let this never be 
forgotten by us, for it is this only that can bring our 
natural talents or acquired abilities to bear upon our 
work. Still, the question addressed to him who would 
become a preacher, is that which was three times 
pressed upon the humble Peter, " Lovest thou me?" 
not, observe, Lovest thou the work? but, " Lovest thou 
me?" and when we can answer, "Thou knowest all 
things, Thou knowest that I love Thee," we have at 
once the commission and the qualification to feed the 
sheep and the lambs of the flock, for that love will 
consecrate the whole man, and make him all magnetic. 



LECTURE IV. 

THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 



LECTURE IV. 

THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 

r I ^HE special work which as ministers we have 
-*- to do, is the preaching of the Gospel. We have 
been " allowed of God," like Paul, " to be put in trust 
with the Gospel ;"* and to us also, is committed " the 
ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imput- 
ing their trespasses unto them."f It is of the highest 
importance, therefore, that we should rightly under- 
stand the theme which we have to treat, and the 
range which it commands. 

The Gospel is a message of good news. It takes 
for granted that men are sinners, under sentence, and 
carrying in themselves a nature that is prone to evil, 
and averse to good ; and it brings to them an assur- 
ance that they may be forgiven and renewed, through 
faith in Jesus Christ. Thus the Lord himself said to 
Nicodemus, " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life. For God so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 



* i Thessalonians ii. 4. +2 Corinthians v. w. 

4* (81) 



82 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life."* And again in connection with the in- 
troduction to Him of the Greeks at Jerusalem, He 
said, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me."f 

Similarly, Paul defines the Gospel to be the setting 
forth of Christ Jesus by God, " to be a propitiation 
through faith in His blood, to declare His righteous- 
ness for the remission of sins that are past, through 
the forbearance of God, to declare at this time His 
righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier 
of him that believeth.";}; So also, in describing the 
substance of his preaching to the Corinthians he says : 
" I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also 
received, how that Christ died for our sins, according 
to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and 
that He rose again the third day, according to the 
Scriptures."§ And if one should ask what he means 
by the phrase, " Christ died for our sins," he is an- 
swered by this declaration made elsewhere, " God 
hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; 
that we might be made the righteousness of God in 
Him. "I So important did the great apostle deem this 
truth, that he says to the Corinthians, " We preach 
Christ crucified ;"^[ and affirms that when he went to 
them at first, " he determined not to know anything 
among them, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."** 



* John iii. 14-16. t John xii. 32. 

% Romans iii. 25-26. § 1 Corinthians xv. 3-5. 

|| 2 Corinthians v. 21. IF 1 Corinthians i. 23. 

** 1 Corinthians ii. 2. 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 83 

While to the Galatians he says, " God forbid that I 
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I 
unto the world. "* 

Many more passages might be quoted to the like 
effect, all going to show that the central interest of 
the Gospel is in a person, namely, Jesus Christ ; in a 
certain fact about that person, namely, that He was 
crucified ; and in the relation of that fact on the one 
hand to God, and on the other hand to men, so that 
human sinners believing in Jesus, may be righteously 
forgiven, and renewed in the spirit of their minds. 

This, then, is the message with which we are en- 
trusted, and which it is alike our privilege and our 
duty to proclaim to men. But if we have rightly 
described it, then it must be evident at a glance, that 
if we would proclaim it intelligibly, we must have 
much to say both about the nature of Christ's person, 
and the character of His death. To call upon men con- 
stantly to "come to Christ," or to repeat perpetually the 
words of Paul to the jailer, " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ," without at the same time telling them who 
Jesus is, and what it is to come to Him, and believe 
on Him, is the merest mockery. It is using the name 
of Christ as if it were some cabalistic charm, and re- 
ducing the Gospel message to a mere empty formula. 
If, therefore, we would be effective preachers, we 
must be ready to give an answer to him that asks us, 
" Who is Jesus, that I may believe on Him ? and what 
was there in His dying that has any relation to me?" 

But the attempt to answer these questions, will bring 

* Galatians vi. 14. 



84 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

us at once into the region of doctrine, and there we are 
met with the popular cry, " Preach Christ, and leave 
doctrines alone." But how is it possible to do anything 
of the kind ? The word Christ is not a mere abstraction. 
It is the name of a person, and if we attempt to tell 
who or what He is, we are giving forth a doctrine 
about His person. Equally if we endeavor to describe 
what the significance of His death is, we are put- 
ting forth a doctrine of the atonement. Thus, not 
only those of us who are styled evangelical are guilty 
of doctrinal preaching. If we shall say that Jesus 
Christ was only a man, that is a doctrine of His per- 
son, as really as is the assertion that in Him the eternal 
Word was made flesh. If we shall affirm, that His 
death was nothing more than that of a martyr, that is 
a doctrine about Christ's crucifixion, as really as is the 
declaration that He died the just in the stead of the 
unjust. If, again, we should try to explain what it is 
to come to Jesus or to believe on Him, the effort, 
if successful, will issue in a doctrinal sermon on the 
nature of faith. 

In truth, gentlemen, there is nothing more absurd 
than this clamor against doctrine, for they who raise 
it do not seem to see that there is beneath the cry 
itself a doctrine, to the effect that it makes no matter 
what a man believes, if he only say that he is resting 
upon Christ. But the Christ that saves, is the Christ 
that is revealed in the Gospels, not the mere idea of 
Him which a man may form in his own mind. It is 
not believing on Christ as I have shaped Him for my- 
self, but rather believing on the Christ that is set be- 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 85 

fore me in the Gospel, that saves me ; and so it is of 
immense consequence that I should have a right view 
both of His person and work. If, therefore, you mean 
to be successful preachers, you will do well to shut 
your ears to all that senseless outcry against doctrine 
which has become a part of the most fashionable cant 
of the day. One of the most eloquent of living Eng- 
lish nonconformists, has said very truly here : " It is im- 
possible to preach Christ without preaching dogma, 
unless I confine myself to a bare recital of the mere 
externals of the history : and if I could do that, it were 
no Gospel. For what of good news is there in the dry 
chronicle that He lived and died, any more than in 
the same bald record about any other man? Is the 
mere story of His death a gospel ? Does it not need 
a commentary explanatory of the fact to make it that ? 
The history becomes a gospel by the presence of the 
doctrine as touching His person, that He is the Son 
of God: as touching His death, that it is the sacrifice 
for the sins of the world. Without so much of dogma, 
the facts are not seen ; without so much they are 
powerless to bless ; and our Gospel is of another sort, 
or rather it is not one at all, unless we too can declare 
this as ' the gospel which we preached, how that 
Christ' — the very name being the condensation of a 
whole system of doctrines — ' died for our sins accord- 
ing to the Scriptures.' "* 

* " The Gospel for the Day," being the President's address bo- 
fore the annual meet ing of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and 
Ireland, by Rev. Alexander Maclaren, Manchester. Reported 
verbatim in "The Baptist," April 30, 1875. One.of the noblest 

discourses of a very noble man. 



86 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Unless, therefore, you are prepared to say some- 
thing very definite, both concerning the nature of 
Christ's person, and concerning the character and effi- 
cacy of His death, you had better never enter the 
pulpit. The notion of many seems to be that vague- 
ness is the prime excellence in a sermon. They are 
always dealing in the indefinite. You cannot make 
out from their words what, according to their view, 
Christ is, whether incarnate God, or simply the high- 
est style of man ; and though they can speak of the 
"cross of Christ," and of " Christ crucified," you can- 
not but feel that the words to them are mere empty 
symbols. Now, all such preaching is a w r aste of 
words. Gentlemen, it is the positive element in your 
teaching that will, through God's spirit, be powerful 
with your hearers ; and if you cannot give any distinct 
utterance as to who Christ is, or what He has done, 
then all your criticisms of the ordinary evangelical 
doctrines will be valueless to the anxious inquirer, and 
may be even injurious in unsettling the mind of some 
one who has been but slenderly ballasted with bibli- 
cal knowledge. 

Preach doctrine, therefore. Do not proclaim 
it as if it were the Saviour, but let your doctrine 
define the Saviour to the minds of those who wait 
upon your ministry. Do not make your treatment 
of doctrine an occasion for metaphysical display, 
but seek rather by your dogmatic teachings to give 
clearness and force to the apprehension which your 
hearers have of truth. Above all, seek to have your 
doctrines vitalized by their connection with Christ, so 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPI'i. 87 

that they may appear either to flow from Him, or to lead 
up to Him, and then they will give to your discourses 
a symmetry and a strength which otherwise they 
could not possess ; and save them from degenerating 
into soft, molluscous, and plastic things, which may 
be squeezed by the hearer into any shape, or turned 
by him into any direction. " He who teaches," says 
Bautain, " has always a doctrine to expound."* It is 
impossible to give a pupil any correct idea either of 
philosophy or of any one of the natural sciences, unless 
there be connected with the facts which are set be- 
fore his mind, a commentary of doctrine. The name 
of Kepler is a. name and nothing more, until we have 
associated it with those laws, that is doctrines, of mo- 
tion of which he w T as the earliest exponent ; and the 
place of Newton in the history of science cannot be 
described by us, unless we give an exposition of that 
doctrine of gravitation which was his generalization 
from the facts of nature. Nay more, we cannot en- 
force the plainest moral precept without finding our- 
selves ultimately in the region of doctrine ; for if we 
urge upon a man the duty of honesty, and he should 
ask us on what ground we do so, then, whether we re- 
ply, " because honesty is the best policy," or " because 
honesty is commanded by God," or " because honesty 
is required by the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber," our answer is a doctrine. Every practical 
precept must stand thus upon some doctrine; and so 
Ave are forced to conclude that this modern antipathy 

* " The Art of Extempore Speaking," by M. Bautain. Scrib- 

ner's edition, p. 141, 



88 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

to doctrine is not so much an opposition to doctrine 
in itself, as to those doctrines which evangelical preach- 
ers love to set forth. And in that aspect of it, the 
prejudice is not so modern after all, for it had an ex- 
istence even in the days of Paul, whose doctrine of 
Christ crucified was to the Jews a " stumbling-block," 
and to the Greeks " foolishness/' 

In spite, therefore, of all that is said by the superfi- 
cial to the contrary, let your preaching to sinners be 
an exposition to them of the doctrine of the cross. 
Be not content merely with the presentation to them 
of the incarnation. Paul did not say, " I determined 
not to know anything among you but Jesus Christ, ,, 
and then stop there ! He added with special empha- 
sis, " and Him crucified," for in the union of the two, 
and the blessing which flowed therefrom, the Gospel 
in his view consisted. Even if we accept the incarna- 
tion as a fact, the Lord Jesus could have had no sav- 
ing relationship to us, if He had not died for our sins ; 
while again, His death could have had no value as an 
atonement for sin, if He had not been incarnate God. 
It is not simply that one died for us, but it is that He 
who so died was such an one as the Son of God. This 
is the essence of the atonement, which " declared God's 
righteousness," even in the forgiveness of a believing 
sinner. Here is mercy righteously manifested to the 
guilty. 

Wherever else you look, in air, on earth, or in the 
sea, there is law — hard, remorseless law — good as long 
as you obey it, but relentless the moment you run 
counter to its requirements. Combustion has no 



7 HE THEME AND RANGE OE THE P ULPIT. 89 

mercy if you thrust your finger into the flames ; 
gravitation has no consideration for the consequences 
on you if you step over a precipice ; the sea knows no 
compassion if you fall into its depths. Nowhere in 
nature can you discern anything of mercy to the law- 
breaker. Its aspect is, in this regard, very terrible. 

But in the cross of Christ there is a provision made 
for showing mercy to the sinner ; while yet the law 
which the sinner has broken is honored and " estab- 
lished." - * There is love in it that " passeth knowl- 
edge." And we must take heed so to preach it, that 
men shall recognize that it flowed from the heart of 
God as He yearned for their deliverance from the con- 
sequences of their sins. The death of Christ did not 
purchase God's love for the world ; but it opened up 
a way in which that love could be righteously exer- 
cised in the forgiving of sin. Thus these two princi- 
ples, love and righteousness, are the two great ele- 
ments of the power of the cross. The love fills and 
melts the sinner's heart ; and the righteousness satis- 
fies his conscience, so that as soon as he believes the 
truth which is in Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he 
is filled with a joy which is unspeakable, and a peace 
which is perennial. 

That very faculty within him which before up- 
braided him with his guilt, now rests satisfied in the 
assurance of a pardon which is sealed by righteousness. 
Without that seal, however, he could have no abiding 
comfort, and so, even if the atonement had not been 



* Romans iii. 31. 



GO THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

needed to meet the demands of the divine law, it would 
be required to satisfy the conscience of the sinner him- 
self. He cannot have permanent peace in a pardon 
that ignores justice. But because through the cross 
the love and righteousness of God are seen harmo- 
niously working out his forgiveness, he is at rest. 

Let us take care lest in our preaching we " put 
asunder " those two things which in the Gospel God 
has so thoroughly " joined together.'' We must not 
exalt the love without making mention of the right- 
eousness. Indeed, if there were no righteousness, 
making the death imperative in order to the salvation 
of men, it is hard to see how there could be love in 
the dying. But neither, on the other hand, must we 
exalt the righteousness in such a way as to obscure 
the love. In the one case the Gospel will be made to 
wear an aspect of indifference to evil, and the hearer 
may fall into the terrible mistake of supposing that 
the more he sins, the more the grace of God will 
abound toward him. In the other it will be made to 
assume an appearance of terror, which will make men 
" exceedingly fear and quake," like the Israelites at 
the base of Sinai. But when we give each element 
its proper prominence, the love attracts to God, and 
the righteousness restrains from sin. The man of 
science takes a piece of limestone, and bringing two 
different kinds of gases to bear upon it, he makes it 
glow with a brightness that turns night well-nigh into 
day. Something like that, only in a spiritual way, is 
wrought on the stony heart of the sinner when he 
understands and believes what the cross of Christ 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT, gi 

proclaims to him, for as the love and righteousness 
which it reveals come streaming in upon him, they 
dispel the darkness of his misery, and irradiate him 
with the light of heaven's own joy. 

This was the Gospel which, as proclaimed by Paul, 
was demonstrated to be the power of God unto salva- 
tion. This was the Gospel which, as preached by 
Luther, roused Europe from the slumber of centuries 
and shook popery to its centre. And if we to-day 
would re-clothe it with its ancient might, we must 
hold and teach it as Paul did. They tell us, indeed, 
that we must adapt our sermons to the necessities of 
our age ; but, while in some minor respects the advice 
is good, we must beware of supposing that we are 
either to add to, or take from, those essential ele- 
ments in which the Gospel, as revealed in the New 
Testament, consists. The preaching most adapted 
to any age is the preaching of the Gospel, not in dry, 
dogmatic formulae, nor in fierce and controversial 
spirit, but in the way of simple and positive state- 
ment. Let us tell men that " Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save sinners ; " let us commend to them 
the love of God " in that while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us." Let us teach that they are to be 
saved, not by sacramental efficacy, or ritual observ- 
ances, or even moral worth, but simply and alone 
through faith in Him who loved them and gave Him- 
self for them. That is the Gospel which even' age 
needs, and its adaptation to the human heart is made 
gloriously apparent wherever it is earnestly pro- 
claimed. 



Q2 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

We may learn much here from the example of Paul 
on his visit to Corinth. There he found two classes of 
minds, the representatives of two opposite tendencies. 
The one sought a philosophy, and the other a sign. 
Yet Paul preached to both " Jesus Christ and Him 
crucified." That which they did not wish, was yet that 
which they most needed. And so to-day ; in the face 
of rationalism and ritualism, whose supporters are the 
legitimate successors of the Greek and the Jew in 
apostolic times, we shall find that all our power in the 
pulpit will lie, not in fierce controversy, nor in trim- 
ming concession, but in the plain, earnest enforcement 
of the good old truth that " Jesus Christ died for our 
sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was 
buried, and that he rose again the third day accord- 
ing to the Scriptures." As Mr. Maclaren has said, in 
the address from which I have already quoted, " There 
is as true adaptation in rowing against or athwart the 
stream as in going with it ; and unless this age has 
got rid of the one-sidedness which has always hitherto 
affected the current beliefs of a period, perhaps the 
truest adaptation of a message to its wants, is to bring 
into prominence what it overlooks, and to emphasize 
the proclamation of what it does not believe."* Preach 
the Gospel as Paul preached it, and you may look for 
a success similar to that which crowned his labors. 

Just as I was entering on my ministry at Liverpool, 
I fell in with a copy of Spenser's " Pastoral Sketches," 



* Maclaren's Address at the Annual Meeting of the Baptist 
Union, as before. 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 



93 



with an Introductory Essay on the Preaching of the 
Gospel, by the late Mr. James, of Birmingham. I 
was in a mood to be impressed, and a severe domes- 
tic affliction through which I was then passing made 
me more susceptible than even the beginning of a 
new pastorate would of itself have rendered me. 
So I was profoundly moved by Mr. James's arguments 
and appeals. I have since read them, again and 
again, and have seen little remarkable about them ; 
but, as perused then, they led me to set my whole 
ministry to the key of the cross. I tried simply, 
faithfully, and affectionately to tell " the old, old 
story of Jesus and His love." Very soon inquirers 
came to talk with me. I was cheered and encour- 
aged by receiving new converts at every communion. 
This kept me from ever yielding to the temptation to 
turn aside from the great central themes, and my suc- 
cess, such as it was, in that sphere, was owing, I am 
thoroughly persuaded, to the fact that I tried always 
to keep the cross in sight, and sought always to hide 
myself behind my Lord. 

When, again, I was crossing the Atlantic to take 
charge of my present congregation, not one of whom 
I had ever seen, I found the " Life of Chalmers" in 
the library of the ship, and amid the anxiety and 
suspense of my heart, as I felt that I had not " passed 
this way heretofore," I was greatly cheered and en- 
couraged by the account of the effects prod need by 
the preaching of that great man in his later life at 
Kilmany, and in his glorious ministry at Glasgow, 
This led me to resolve anew that in the ministry 



54 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

of the Broadway Tabernacle, I would, as in Liverpool, 
seek to preach so that my hearers " should see no 
man save Jesus only," and if I have had any measure 
of success, this is the secret of it all. I feel almost 
as if it were an impertinence to speak thus. Why 
should I presume, as it were, to endorse the Gospel 
thus ? and yet, as an elder brother, I may surely tell 
you of my limited experience, in the hope that in 
after years you will have to say to me, " Now, we 
believe it, not for thy saying," but because we have 
tried it ourselves, and we know that it is " the power 
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." 

But the minister of the Gospel in these days is a 
pastor as well as a preacher, and so he has to do with 
those who are already Christians, as well as with 
those who are " ignorant and out of the way." It 
will be his business not merely to stand at the " w T ick- 
et-gate " and help men through that as they set out 
on their pilgrimage to the " celestial city;" but also 
to make up to them afterwards at their several stages 
on their journey, and to give them such assistance 
and direction as they need. The " Evangelist " who 
goes from place to place may content himself with 
performing the office of John the Baptist, esteeming his 
joy fulfilled when he has introduced the sinner to his 
Saviour. But the Christian pastor has to " go before 
his flock," and " lead them out " and " find pasture " 
for them appropriate to their nourishment. He has to 
watch over and encourage the development of char- 
acter in the Christian, as well as to call on the sinner 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 



95 



to " repent and be converted ; " and while, of course, 
he will greatly rejoice over the conversion of sinners, 
he will rejoice no less over the growth in grace of 
those who are already in Christ. He must be on his 
guard against devoting himself to either of these de^ 
partments of his work to the exclusion of the other, 
for only in the proper prosecution of them both, the 
symmetry and completeness of his ministry will be 
secured. 

Judging from my own experience, you will be 
most apt to set yourselves in the beginning of your 
career, to secure the conversion of sinners ; while, 
perhaps, as you advance in the work, you may be 
tempted to run into the other extreme, and preach 
only to those who are already in the Church. But 
in neither case will there be a " right division " of the 
word of truth ; and your aim ought to be, on every 
occasion, to give to each " his portion in season. " 

Still, as there is a tendency in these days among 
many to restrict the ministry to one phase of truth 
merely, I may be forgiven if I dwell for a moment 
or two on the importance of seeking in your dis- 
courses the spiritual profit of that large class of your 
hearers who have made an open confession of their 
faith in Christ, and who are needing cither to be 
warned against dangers which threaten to impair 
their strength, or to be encouraged under trials that arc 
pressing heavily upon their hearts. It has come to be 
taken for granted in many quarters, that the success 
of a ministry is to be gauged simply by the number oi 
conversions which have occurred in its course: and 



g6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

this has led too many churches to bend all their 
energies toward the securing of such accessions to 
their membership, as if that were the sole end to be 
attained. Pastor, Sabbath-school teachers, office- 
bearers, members, labor and pray in public, and ex- 
hort in private, in order that they may lead men to 
Christ, and to a public confession of Him, and then, 
when they have got their names on the communion 
roll, they leave them to take care of themselves, and 
they go and look after others. But, in reality, this is 
only the beginning with them, and to leave them 
thus untended is the greatest possible mistake. 

We cry out against the heedlessness of those 
parents who so neglect their offspring as to leave 
them an easy prey to the diseases which make such 
havoc on little children. But " infant mortality " is 
by no means unknown in our churches, any more 
than in our cities, and I fear that the disappearance 
of many who were once written down as " hopefully 
converted " is due to the fact that so many of our 
ministers and their coadjutors never concern them- 
selves with any other topic than conversion. Now 
that is unquestionably a most important theme, and 
the direction of inquirers is an interesting and in- 
tensely exciting department of ministerial labor ; but 
it is not the whole work of the pastor. " Doth the 
ploughman plough all day to sow ? doth he open and 
break the clods of his ground ? When he hath made 
plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the 
fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the prin- 
cipal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. 



97 



their place ? For his God doth instruct him to dis- 
cretion, and doth teach him."* Something more than 
ploughing is required for successful husbandry ; and 
more is needed in the culture of a parish than the 
preaching of conversion, or the saying to men, " Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved." 
Faith is good ; is, indeed, indispensable, but it is 
only the first round of the ladder, and we ought not 
to be content until our hearers have added to it, 
courage, and knowledge, and temperance, and pa- 
tience, and godliness, and brotherly kindness, and 
love, for in that way alone can they " make their 
calling and election sure." 

Thus in our ministry we have not simply to make 
known to men the way of salvation, as Peter did on 
the day of Pentecost, and in the house of Cornelius, 
and as Paul did to the jailer, and to his hearers in Thes- 
salonica and Berea, but we have also to do a work 
not unlike that which these apostles performed in the 
Epistles which came afterwards from their pens. Or 
as Paul has said to Timothy, we have to " reprove, 
rebuke, and exhort with all long-suffering and doc- 
trine, "f We are to expose prevailing sins, warn against 
existing temptations, incite to higher holiness, and 
stimulate to the performance of " works of faith and 
labors of love." 

Yet, not unfrequently, when a sermon has been 
preached exposing some social evil, and unfolding 
the remedy by which alone it can be removed, the 



* Isaiah xxviii 24-20. ]• 2 Tim. h - 



gS THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

minister will be told that he is going aside from his 
proper work as an ambassador for Christ, and some 
earnest but narrow soul may say to him, " Preach 
the Gospel, and leave these subjects alone ; remember 
him who said, ' I determined not to know anything 
among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' ,: 

Now, as is abundantly evident from what I have 
already said, I find no fault with the sentiment of 
these words. Nay, rather when rightly understood, 
they strike the key-note of every evangelical minis- 
try ; but my complaint is, that those who quote them 
for our benefit, seem to have no correct idea of the 
meaning which Paul himself attached to them. He 
did not intend to say that every time he opened 
his lips, he would tell over again the story of the 
Cross, but rather that as the means of saving men 
from their sins, he would set nothing else before them 
than Jesus Christ and Him crucified ; and further, 
that the Cross was to be the great centre of his teach- 
ing, from which he claimed and exercised the liberty 
of treating every subject in the whole circumference 
of human duty and experience. 

I wonder what those who would restrict us to the sim- 
ple invitation of sinners to come to Christ, as if that 
alone were evangelical preaching, would say to the 
Apostle James, if he were to occupy a modern pul- 
pit and give his epistle as a sermon. Nay, I wonder 
what they make of the very Epistle of Paul, from 
which their quotation is taken, for within the short 
compass of its sixteen chapters he discusses such ques- 
tions as the propriety of marriage in a time of peril, 
the eating of meat offered to idols, the going to law 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT, gg 

before heathen tribunals, the right manner of con- 
ducting public worship, the evil of ecclesiastical divi- 
sions, and even so commonplace a matter as a benev- 
olent collection. Were Paul and James unevangeli- 
cal ? No ; they were in all this most truly preaching 
the Gospel, because they were bringing the principles 
which underlie its message, to bear upon the circum- 
stances and conduct of those whom they addressed. 

The truth is, that the Gospel is related to every- 
thing which affects the happiness and the holiness of 
men ; and its minister not only may, but ought to 
show its relations to these things in his discourses. 
Only let him see to it that when he is seeking to 
elevate men, he uses the Cross as his lever, and then 
while his discourses are helpful to believers, they will 
at the same time be the means of awakening and 
converting sinners. There is a way of getting at the 
hearts and consciences of the unconverted, even when 
we are furnishing guidance and encouragement to the 
true Christian ; and on the other hand, we may deal 
with sinners in such a way as shall also stimulate and 
quicken saints. 

Indeed, if we care to study true wisdom here, we 
shall aim at having in every sermon a word for even- 
hearer ; and if you ask me how that is to be attained, 
I will set you to the study of those Epistles to which 
I have already so frequently referred. Whatever 
may be the immediate object which Paul is seeking, 
he tries to attain that object by the Cross. 

Thus, in reproving the unseemly divisions that had 
sprung up in the Corinthian Church, he says: "Is 
Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you, or wen 



IOO THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

you baptized in the name of Paul?"* Now, weighty 
as that was as an argument for union and brotherly- 
love, it has in it, also, an incidental preaching of the 
Gospel so simple, yet so full, that some poor sinner 
might have caught at it with joy. 

Again, in enforcing the duty of maintaining purity 
of discipline in the Church, he uses this plea : " Purge 
out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new 
lump as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our 
passover is sacrificed for us ; therefore, let us keep 
the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven 
of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened 
bread of sincerity and truth." f Now, there is a whole 
syllogism wrapped up in the illustration that is here 
employed ; but what I wish you particularly to observe 
is, that the centre of the illustration itself, is a decla- 
ration of the Gospel. So that while aiming after the 
purifying of the Church, he does at the same time 
clearly and simply unfold the great truth that Christ 
is sacrificed for us. 

In a similar manner, while denouncing the sin of 
fornication, he puts the matter thus : " What ? know 
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye 
are not your own ? for ye are bought with a price : 
therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, 
which are God's." % Here again, you observe, while 
exposing sin, he does it in such a way as at the same 
time to preach " Christ crucified." They say that 
when one of .the most interesting ruins in the city 

* i Corinthians i. 13. f 1 Corinthians v. 7, 8. 

X 1 Corinthians vi. 19, 20. 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. I0 I 

of Rome was in danger of destruction, because the 
neighboring inhabitants were continually removing 
stones from it for their own buildings, the reigning 
Pontiff put a stop to the vandalism of the people, by 
consecrating the venerable remains and setting up 
the Cross in the midst of them. Now, similarly here, 
Paul has put the Cross in the centre of human life, 
and so has made it sacrilege for the believer to take 
any portion of his being, or any fraction of his time 
and give it to another than his Lord. But he could 
not put the Cross there without letting it be seen, 
and so here again, he has preached the Gospel most 
effectively, even when he was seeking specially to 
warn his readers against a particular sin. 

But to mention only one more instance ; when he 
is pleading the cause of the poor saints at Jerusalem, 
he is careful so to do it, as at the same time to give a 
very striking and comprehensive summary of the Gos- 
pel. Thus he writes : " For ye know the grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet 
for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His 
poverty might be rich."* It is singular that such an 
expression — so beautiful, so suggestive, and every 
way so worthy of the sacrifice it describes — should 
have come thus incidentally from the pen of the 
Apostle. He was presenting a motive to the Cor- 
inthians to induce them to give a good collection, 
and lo ! at the same time, he preaches the Gospel in 
language which is, even with him, unusual in its en- 
ergy and elevation. 



* 2 Corinthians viii. 9. 



I02 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Now, all this shows us what Paul meant by preach- 
ing " Christ and Him crucified ;" and lets us see how, 
even when we are dealing with those " called to be 
saints/' we may have also words " in season " for the 
sinner. For the Epistles to the Corinthians are not 
singular in the characteristic which I have endeavored 
to point out to you. The other letters of Paul, and 
those of his fellow-apostles, John, Peter, and James, 
are equally remarkable in this respect ; and if, with 
the instances which I have particularized, in mind, 
you study these productions, you will see that evan- 
gelical preaching is something far more important 
than the mere iteration to men of the Gospel invita- 
tion to " come to Jesus." 

The Gospel, as Paul preached it, was far-reaching 
enough in its application to touch at every point the 
conduct and experiences of men. The Cross, as he 
used it, was an instrument of the widest range and 
of the greatest power. When, therefore, I insist that 
you like him should " preach Jesus Christ and Him 
crucified," I do not mean to make the pulpit for you 
a battery, of such a nature that the guns upon it can 
strike only such vessels as happen to pass immediately 
in front of its embrasures. On the contrary, I turn it for 
you into a tower, whereon is mounted a swivel-cannon, 
which can sweep the whole horizon of human life, 
and strike down all immorality, and ungodliness, and 
selfishness, and sin. I do not shut you into a small 
chamber having but one outlook, and even that into 
a narrow court ; but I place you in an^ observatory, 
with a revolving telescope that can command the 
landscape round and round, and sweep, besides, the 



THE THEME AND RANGE OF THE PULPIT. yo ^ 

hemisphere of the stars. I do not mean that you 
should keep continually repeating the words of " the 
faithful saying" like a parrot-cry, until every particle 
of meaning has dropped out of them ; but rather, 
that you should make application of the great princi- 
ples that lie beneath the Cross, to the ever-varying 
circumstances and occurrences of life, and that in such 
a way as at once to succor the Christian and arrest' 
and convert the sinner. I do not mean that you 
should disdain the aids of literature, or refuse to use 
such illustrations as science may supply ; but rather 
that, while employing all these, you should make them 
always subservient to this central theme, and ever turn 
their light upon the Master's face. I do not mean 
that you should decline to venture with your hearers 
for a voyage over the ocean of truth ; but rather that 
while sailing forth, you should be careful still to have 
your first parallel of longitude passing through Cal- 
vary, that so you may judge of all things else by their 
relation to the Cross, and that, ever as you have 
opportunity, you should beseech sinners to be recon- 
ciled to God. 

Is there anywhere, gentlemen, a finer field for use- 
fulness than tfye pulpit is when thus employed ? Is 
there anywhere a more powerful instrument for good 
than the Cross of Christ when thus applied ? Go 
forth determined to use them both to the full, after 
the pattern of the great Apostle ; and though you 
may not have at anytime such seasons of excitement 
as men commonly call revivals, your ministry will be 
a constant revival, for you will be always gladdened 
by the occurrence of conversions, while at [lie same 



104 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



time you are encouraged by beholding your children 
u walking in the truth." 

He will never find the pulpit either a narrow place 
or a useless place, who enters it in the spirit in which 
the Lord Himself began His ministry, and feels that 
he, too, can say, at least with some measure of truth, 
" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because 
the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings 
unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ; 
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the 
day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that 
mourn ; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to 
give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness, that they might be called trees of right- 
eousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might 
be glorified."* Go, gentlemen, and do that work, 
using the Cross of Christ as your great instrument, 
and you will find a sphere ample enough for all your 
energies, and success large enough to fill your hearts 
with joy. 



* Isaiah lxi. 1-3. I cannot quote this passage without direct- 
ing attention to the volume written in exposition of it, by my old 
friend and neighbor, the Rev. Alexander Macleod, D.U., Birken- 
head, England. His work on these verses, entitled u Christus 
Consolator," is a most valuable treatise, vindicating successfully 
the liberty of the pulpit to deal with social questions, and furnish- 
ing an excellent example of the best way of handling very deli- 
cate subjects. 



LECTURE V. 

THE QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING— IN THE 
SERMON. 



LECTURE V. 

THE QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING — IN THE 
SERMON. 

npHAT is effective preaching which convinces the 
-*- intellect, stirs the heart, and quickens the con- 
science of the hearer, so that he is moved to believe 
the truth which has been presented to him, or to take 
the course which has been enforced upon him. 

This result cannot be produced, in any case, with- 
out the agency of the Holy Ghost ; yet it is never to 
be forgotten that, in bringing it about, that Divine 
person works by means, which have, even in them- 
selves, a fitness to secure the end in view. Now of 
these means, so far as they are connected with the 
Christian ministry, the sermon is the most important ; 
and the preacher ought always to seek that his dis- 
course shall have in it special adaptation to effect the 
result which, at the moment, he has set before him. 
There is no inconsistency between his faith in the 
necessity of the agency of the Spirit, and his exertion 
to have his sermon such as shall be signally fitted to 
impress his hearers; nay, rather the more intelligently 
be believes that he is a "laborer together with God," 
the more diligently will he work to make his discourse 
as excellent as possible. The husbandman knows that 
he cannot make the seed grow ; yet while he looks to 

(107) 



108 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

God for the increase, he is himself careful to treat 
each sort of soil as its nature requires, and to give to 
each kind of crop the peculiar attention that its char- 
acter demands. And in like manner, though the 
preacher is aware that God alone can make his ser- 
mon effectual in the spiritual profiting of his hearers, 
yet " because he is wise," he seeks "to find out ac- 
ceptable words" which shall be "as goads, and as 
nails fastened by the masters of assemblies." * 

There are, indeed, extremists who affirm that all at- 
tention paid by the preacher to the preparation of his 
discourse, is just so much dishonor done to the Holy 
Spirit ; but such an opinion is utterly opposed to the 
fundamental principle of the ministry of the Gospel. 
The peculiar glory of that service is, that it is a sacri- 
fice. The preacher lays both himself and his sermon 
upon the altar, that his Lord may use them for the 
highest and holiest purposes. Now, every sacrifice 
should be the very noblest we can offer. Hence, 
just because the minister feels that he is consecrated 
(not by any formal ordination, but by his own volun- 
tary dedication and by the anointing of the Holy 
Ghost) to Christ, he seeks to make himself " thor- 
oughly furnished " for his work ; and because he 
makes his sermon an offering to Christ, he labors to 
have it the best .he can produce. Out of the very 
love of his heart he endeavors to make his discourse 
the very finest tribute which he can lay at his Mas- 
ter's feet, for 

" Love still delights to bring her best, 
And where love is, her offering evermore is blest." 

* Ecclesiastes xii. 10, n. 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. IO g 

When, therefore, he is acting on this principle, he is 
not to be told that he is dishonoring the Spirit. It 
seems very pious to be thus jealous for the honor of 
the Holy Ghost, but it is in reality very impious, and 
the minister who seeks to glorify God by systemati- 
cally neglecting the preparation of his discourses, 
will find in the end that he has only covered himself 
with disgrace. In the work of " winning souls," as in 
other departments of human activity, it is " the hand 
of the diligent " that " maketh rich." 

There is, therefore, no reason, so far as the prerog- 
ative of the Holy Ghost is concerned, why we should 
refuse to consider the question, What are the quali- 
ties of an effective sermon ? That is the topic which 
I have chosen for the present Lecture, but as I at- 
tempt to treat it, do not expect that I shall enter 
upon minute details concerning such technicalities 
as exordium, division, discussion, peroration, and the 
like. These belong to the work of the class of homi- 
letics, and they have been already handled by a whole 
host of writers — by none more ably than by your own 
excellent Professor. You will not misunderstand me, 
either, if I should not repeat here what I have already 
said so emphatically about the importance of preach- 
ing "Christ and Him crucified." My present inquiry 
concerns not the matter, but the medium through 
which that matter is to be conveyed ; and my aim 
will be to give you a few general principles, empha- 
sized by experience, which may guide you so to preach 
as to present the truth in the most winning and im- 
pressive form. 



HO THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Now, in analyzing the qualities which go to make 
a sermon effective, I find some in the discourse itself, 
and some in the preacher, and though those which 
are in the sermon must have been first in the preach- 
er, yet it will contribute to simplicity and tend to 
keep us from confusion, to adhere to this arrange- 
ment. 

Taking those which are in the sermon itself, I 
name as the first, definiteness of aim. Every sermon 
should have a distinct object in view. One must 
preach, not because the Sabbath has come round, 
and he has to occupy the time somehow, but rather 
because there is something pressing upon his mind 
and heart which he feels impelled to proclaim. Some 
doctrine has taken hold of him with peculiar power, 
and while he is under the spell of it, he seeks to ex- 
pound it to his hearers. Some phase of experience has 
come under his observation as he has been visiting 
from house to house, or has left its mark upon him- 
self as he has been passing through it ; and while yet 
the impression is distinct, he makes it the theme of 
public discourse. Some sin has broken out with more 
than usual virulence in his neighborhood, and he sets 
the trumpet to his mouth that he may sound a timely 
alarm. Some department of Christian duty has been 
neglected by the members of his flock, and with all 
fidelity and tenderness he seeks to show them its im- 
portance, and to set before them the blessed results 
which would flow from their attention to it. And so 
as week after week revolves, each Lord's day's address 



Q UA LI TIES OF EFFECTIVE PRE A CUING. m 

has its distinct individuality since he has exerted 
himself in each to do one thing. This, as it seems 
to me, is the ideal of the ministry. 

Ever, therefore, as you sit down to prepare your 
discourse, let your question be, " What is my purpose 
in this sermon?" and do not move a step until you 
have shaped out before your mind a definite answer 
to that inquiry. This will save you from that vague- 
ness which chloroforms so many sermons and sends 
so many hearers to sleep. Set up your goal, and keep 
it always in sight, so every step you take will bring 
you nearer to its attainment, and your audiente will 
be at no loss to see what you are driving at. The 
way to walk in a straight line over a trackless field, is 
to fix the eye, and keep it fixed, on some object that is 
stationary and sufficiently elevated, and then to move 
towards that ; and the great preventive of diffuseness 
and digression in discourse is to have, high aboVe all 
other things in your mind, the perception of the pur- 
pose which your sermon is designed to fulfill. 

But any purpose will not do. You must seek to 
have an aim whose importance will be sufficient to 
stimulate your own mind and to retain the attention 
of your hearers. Avoid all diminutive themes — such 
as may be discussed and settled in a few sentences ; 
for if you try to make a whole sermon on one of 
these, you will be tempted to fill up the time with 
vapid declamation, and will continue to spin away 
with the wheel of verbal fluency long after the " tow " 
of thought has been exhausted. That was a wise ad- 
vice of Dr. James W. Alexander, i4 Preach on great 



H2 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

subjects. " There is something in them to inspire 
the preacher and to subdue and impress the hearer. 
Leave the lesser topics for minor occasions — such as 
the chair of the prayer-meeting or the table of the 
lecture-room will supply, But let your sermons be 
elevated in their subjects, and they will be elevating 
in their influence. 

Yet, when you are dealing with a great theme, do 
not aim at being exhaustive. Leave something for 
again. Try, rather, to be clear, simple, instructive. 
You are not writing a treatise which is to contain 
everything that can be said on every branch of your 
subject ; you are going to address a company of fel- 
low-men, to whom, in all likelihood, you will have 
many other opportunities of speaking, so let your 
endeavor be to give one distinct aspect of your theme, 
leaving other views of it for other occasions. I be- 
lieve *it is a common fault with young preachers to 
overweight their discourses with a superabundance of 
material. Their tendency is to put all they know on 
any subject into the discourse which is treating of 
that subject. So, in a very short time, they exhaust 
their own resources, and even before they have done 
that, they have exhausted the patience of their hear- 
ers. I well remember after I had preached my first 
sermon in a country church, there was reported to 
me a criticism which a plain, blunt man had made 
upon my discourse, which had a world of meaning in 
it in this connection. My text had been the first 
verse of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, " Therefore, being justified by faith, we have 



Q UALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PRE A CHING. \ \ 3 

peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ/' and 
I had dealt with justification, with faith, and with 
peace with God, as if I had resolved not to leave any- 
thing unsaid that could be said upon them. On com- 
ing out of the church, one of my hearers being asked 
, what he thought of the discourse, replied, " These 
young preachers are like young delvers, they take 
thundering big spadefuls ! " That witness was true, 
in my case, and I tried ever afterwards to lighten my 
discourses. Next to the evil of having nothing in a 
sermon at all, is that of having too much in it ; for 
in neither case does the hearer carry much away. 

As another quality of an effective sermon I name 
precision of language. In a passage which I have 
already quoted it is said, " The preacher sought to 
find out acceptable words. " He did not take the 
first which came ; but he selected those which best 
expressed his meaning, and were most suited to the 
people whom he was addressing. The relation of 
style to thought is of the closest kind ; and the aim 
of the preacher should be to get the clearest possible 
medium for the transmission of his thought. That 
is the best glass which most fully admits the light. 
The paintings which the artist produces are very ex- 
cellent in themselves, but in a window the}' are out 
of place — if, that is, the end of the window is to let 
in the light. So, if the end of language is to trans- 
mit thought, then everything in it that withdraws 
attention from the thought to itself, or dims the lus- 
tre of the thought, is a blemish. 1 lenee the preach- 



U 4 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

er's study should be to have every sentence luminous 
with the thought which it is designed to express. 

But how is that to be secured ? Only, in my judg- 
ment, by the careful writing of every discourse. I 
have very strong convictions upon this point, and as 
a different opinion has been recently advanced by one 
whose views must be always received with deference 
and respect, you will forgive me if I seek, with some 
measure of fullness, to set forth my reasons for the 
advice which I have ventured to offer. 

It seems to me that the importance of the work 
we are engaged in demands this exactness of written 
preparation at our hands. We are to speak to men 
about the most momentous matters that can occupy 
their attention, and a word thoughtlessly uttered may 
carry in it consequences of which at the moment we 
little dreamed. Nor is this an improbable contin- 
gency, for the right regulation of the tongue is the 
last attainment of Christian perfection. What says 
the apostle James ? " If any man offend not in word, 
the same is a perfect man/' and it is surely significant 
that this assertion of his comes in immediate connec- 
tion with the injunction, " Be not many masters ;" 
i. e., teachers.* He would dissuade his readers from 
the consuming ambition to become teachers, by set- 
ting before them the difficulty that must ever be felt 
in regulating the tongue, which is the great instru- 
ment which a teacher employs. He, in effect, says 
that the dtddonaXog attempts to perform the most im- 



* The word in the original is did&analoL. 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. j jj 

portant function, namely, that of instruction, with 
the most-difficult-to-be-managed instrument, namely, 
the tongue. But this suggestion, which was meant 
to dissuade the incompetent from pushing themselves 
into the teacher's office, is valuable also to those 
already in it, or preparing for it, as indicating to them 
a danger to which they are peculiarly exposed. It 
means for you and me, that we should take every 
possible precaution to secure that our public utter- 
ances shall be neither hasty, nor unadvised, nor of 
such a sort as shall bring reproach on the Gospel 
whose ministers we are. 

Now the surest means of guarding against this 
danger is the use of the pen. Even those who advo- 
cate careful premeditation of the line of thought 
which the preacher proposes to follow, while yet the 
language is left to the prompting of the moment, 
insist that the constant practice of written compo- 
sition is essential to success. But what is a young 
minister to write, if he do not write his discourses? 
He has not, except in very rare instances, the entree 
into the religious papers, much less into important 
magazines and Reviews. The request to contribute 
to these publications is commonly the consequence 
of a success already achieved, and so there is little 
prospect that he will be able to find continuous em- 
ployment for his pen in any such way. How, then, 
is he to obtain it? Every student knows that while 
the love of truth may stimulate him to investigation, 
the incentive of some sort of publication is required 
to urge him to composition. But what kind of publi- 



n6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

cation has in it more of inspiration for a preacher 
than that of the pulpit ? To say, therefore, that a 
young minister should refrain from writing his ser- 
mons, and yet give himself to other compositions, is 
to bid him abstain from that which will most effectu- 
ally furnish him for his work, while you commend him 
to other pursuits less fitted to give him the discipline 
he needs. If he do not write his discourses, the 
result, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, will 
be that he will write nothing at all, and then his ser- 
mons will become like Gratiano's reasons, having about 
a grain of thought to the bushel of words. 

Moreover, as the minister is to speak on special 
themes, it is in reference to these subjects that he 
particularly needs to cultivate precision of language. 
But how will the composition of a literary essay give 
him definiteness of terminology, say for a doctrinal 
sermon, or even for a discourse exposing some preva- 
lent evil or enforcing some neglected duty? Facility 
in sketching is very good, but that alone will not 
make an architect. To become an adept in that pro- 
fession, one must study mainly the art of construction. 
Similarly the practice of composition in other depart- 
ments will not make a man produce good sermons ; 
that has to be learned by practice, and the thing to 
be practiced is the making of sermons. 

But there is another reason why a sermon should 
be written out with care. We are able to secure 
thereby, that each portion of the discourse shall 
receive its due measure of attention. Even the most 
skillful extemporizers are in danger of enriching the 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. ny 

earlier parts of their sermons at the expense of the 
later. They do not seem to have got quite above the 
fear that haunts the young orator, that he will never 
find enough in his theme to fill out the time allotted 
for his address, so they put a great deal into the intro- 
duction and the sections which immediately follow, 
and when they come to the closing portions, where all 
their resources should be brought into operation, they 
have no time left for the effective presentation even 
of the thoughts which they have premeditated, and 
are obliged to hasten over them so rapidly that the 
hearers lose all sense of their importance. 

Repeatedly, as we have listened to such a preacher, 
we have seemed to ourselves to be driven by him up 
a long and winding avenue toward a spacious and 
hospitable mansion. But he has been diverting our 
attention ever and anon to interesting objects that 
line the way; here was an umbrageous elm, whose 
luxuriant foliage carpeted the earth with shade ; 
there was an opening through which a beautiful 
glimpse of a delightful lake was seen, and yonder was 
a view of the distant mountains smoking under the 
sunshine. At length we reach the door of the house, 
but before we enter we have to survey the entire 
panorama from the piazza, and even as we pass 
through the hall we must pause a moment to admire 
some wonderful picture that hangs there; then, just 
as we gain a vision of the banquet which is laid out 
for us in the dining-room, we discover that we have 
barely time to reach the station so as to obtain the 
train for our return journey, and we have to leave the 
good things largely unenjoyed. 



Il8 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

In a sermon of an hour's length I have more than 
once heard an introduction occupying five and twenty 
minutes ; and on one occasion the preacher, not con- 
tent with one introduction, made another as long as 
the first. Now, I do not say that such serious offences 
against the rule of proportion could not be committed 
in a written discourse, but I do affirm that they would 
be discovered, and opportunity would be afforded for 
their removal before the preacher attempted to sub- 
mit it to the attention of his auditors. 

Again, it ought not to be overlooked, that those 
extemporizers whose success is most frequently refer- 
red to as a reason why sermons should not be writ- 
ten, have generally had something which corre- 
sponded to sermon-writing after all. Thus in refer- 
ence to Robert Hall, this testimony has been borne 
by Dr. Leifchild, who was his friend and neighbor in 
Bristol for some years : " I learned from him that 
most of his great sermons were first worked out in 
thought, and inwardly elaborated in the very words 
in which they were delivered. They were thus held 
so tenaciously in the memory that he could repeat 
them verbatim at the distance of years. He ridi- 
culed the delusion of those who supposed that the 
perorations of his sermons were delivered impromptu, 
observing that they were the most carefully studied 
parts of the whole discourse." * Now this was compo- 
sition of the most difficult kind, and was resorted to, 



* A Memoir of Rev. Dr. Leifchild, by his son, J. R. Leifchild, 
M.A., p. 137. 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. j jg 

we may believe, because the physical infirmity with 
which Hall was afflicted made it agony for him to use 
the pen. 

Again, in the case of F. W. Robertson ; while it is 
true that he delivered his sermons without having 
written them, yet that is only half the truth, for he 
wrote them out on the Mondays after they had been 
preached, and thereby he had the " discipline of the 
pen " as really as if he had written them on the Fridays 
before they were spoken. If, therefore, his example is 
to be good for anything, it must be taken as a whole, 
for there is little doubt that as he looked back on 
what he had said, he would discover faults from which 
he would carefully abstain in his subsequent dis- 
courses. Nor should we fail to observe that if he had 
not written them, these wonderful sermons would 
have been completely lost to the world at large, and 
could not have been so widely useful as since his 
death they have become. 

Similarly, in conversation with Mr. Spurgeon I 
once elicited from him the confession that the cor- 
recting of the proof of his Sunday morning sermon 
gave him, on every Tuesday, the same sort of whole- 
some discipline which we meaner mortals derive from 
the writing of our discourses. Only it gave it to him 
in a stronger measure, since faults always appear more 
glaring in the printed page than in the manuscript. 
He said that sometimes after he had gone over it 
with care the proof looked very black indeed, and 
though on such occasions he was apt to think 
that the reporter must have been asleep, he com- 



120 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

monly discovered that the drowsiness had been in 
himself, and he was thereby stimulated to greater 
watchfulness in the future. But all such after-writing 
or correction is but " a light in the stern of the ship." 
The errors have been committed, and careful writing 
might have prevented their commission. 

So again, when I hear my distinguished friend Dr. 
Storrs affirm concerning himself, that he has no 
verbal memory, and give that as a reason why in his 
preparations he cannot premeditate the words — w T hich 
is only writing without the pen* — I am disposed to 
question the accuracy of his own self-judgment. I 
have read as a written article from his pen the very 
same words which, eighteen months before, I had 
heard from his lips in an apparently extemporaneous 
address, and I have heard it told that in a lecture 
delivered without notes, he gave, without either 
hesitancy or mistake, such a number of dates, that on 
the following morning a friend sent him a box of 
dates, accompanied with a note to the effect that " after 
the expenditure of the previous evening he judged he 
must be quite out of the article/' These incidents, 
therefore, lead me to believe that, unconsciously to 
himself, that eloquent preacher has in his study so 
fixed his train of thought in his mind, that he has no 
difficulty in presenting it to his hearers in the very 
words in which he had before elaborated it. The 
recollection is so spontaneous that it seems to be 

* See " Conditions of Success in Preaching Without Notes," 
by R. S. Storrs, D.D., LL.D. 



Q UA LI TIES OF EFFECTIVE PRE A CUING. t 2 1 

reconstruction. But whether this be so or not, one 
must have his great mental excellences, and in 
addition, the drill of writing first-rate sermons for a 
quarter of a century, if he would faithfully follow the 
example which he has set. 

It is, therefore, with the strongest conviction that I 
am giving you the best possible advice, that I say to 
you, write your sermons. This will give precision to 
your language more effectually than any other pro- 
cess, while when you are in an emergency and com- 
pelled \o extemporize, some former train of thought 
will come at your call, clothed in the words in which 
you had before arrayed it.* 

But I pass now to another quality of effectiveness 
in a sermon which is of not less importance than those 
already mentioned. I mean clearness in arrangement. 
In every discourse there must be method in order to 
movement, and one portion should succeed another 
in such a way as to carry forward the hearer gently yet 
inexorably to the conclusion. Arguments are like 
soldiers, they must be massed and marshalled in such 
a way as to overcome all opposition. Resting upon 
a broad base, they must be made to bring all their 
force to bear upon the main purpose which the 

* " I should lay it down as a rule admitting' of no exception, that 
a man will speak well in proportion as he has written much, and 
that with equal talents he will be the finest extempore speaker. 
when no time for preparing is allowed, who has prepared himself 
most sedulously when he had an opportunity of delivering a pre- 
meditated speech." — Brougham's Inaugural Ad Tori 
Rector of Glasgow University. 



I2 2 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

preacher has in view. Like as in a pyramid, the figure 
rises, narrowing as it ascends, until it terminates in the 
apex ; so a discourse should become, step by step, more 
elevated, increasing in intensity as it rises, until it 
kindles into one burning point, and that point should be 
made to touch the soul of every hearer. Or as in arch- 
ery, the marksman draws back the string on which he 
has fixed his arrow, in order that the full strength of 
the bow may go into the flight of the weapon, so the 
preacher should be all the while gathering energy for 
the truth which he designs at last to send quivering 
home to the heart of every hearer. To this method 
of unity Jay has very seriously objected, affirming his 
preference for textual division ; but it seems to me 
that it is not impossible to combine the two. And 
though it be true as he suggests, that " in preaching 
it should be remembered what diversities of persons 
and cases there are before us at every service, and how 
unlikely these diversities are to be reached by the very 
same thing," yet, it is not to be forgotten that in every 
good sermon which follows the plan of unity, the first 
part of the discourse gathers the hearers up and brings 
them together to the very point which is put before 
them at the close, so that each is made to feel that he 
has a personal responsibility in reference to it. I have 
seen a shepherd gathering his flock upon the High- 
land hills. He sent his trusty dogs far away out 
upon the mountain-side, and they, running round and 
round in ever-narrowing circles, brought the bleating 
multitude together, until each one in it was compelled 
to face the entrance into the fold. So in a sermon, 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING, 223 

.the earlier portions should be employed in encircling 
the audience, until at length, by the converging force 
of its ever-increasing pressure, the discourse brings 
each hearer up to the " strait gate/' and compels him 
to face the question, " Shall I enter in? " 

The principles on which such an arrangement is to 
be made are set forth with sufficient fullness in the 
books on homiletics. Only let it never be forgotten 
that arrangement is essential to effect. It contributes 
to perspicuity. It helps the memory of the hearer to 
recall the various stages of your argument. It satis- 
fies his judgment and carries him on without either 
effort or fatigue to a conclusion, which he feels to be 
a result, and not simply a cessation of speaking on 
your part. 

When George Stephenson, the famous engineer, 
was beaten in argument by Buckland, and a few days 
afterwards Sir William Follett instructed by him, 
thoroughly vanquished his antagonist, he is reported 
to have said, that " of all the powers above and under 
the earth, there seems to be no power so great as the 
gift of the gab."* But I suspect that the burly engi- 
neer had mistaken the marshalling of arguments for the 
command of words. The great lawyer knew how to 
arrange his materials, and in that, rather than in his 
readiness of utterance, was the secret of his success. 
The nine digits may be so placed as to mean less than 
a unit, and, again, they may be put into such order as 



* " The Life of George Stephenson and of his son, Robert 
Stephenson," by Samuel Smiles, p.^67. 



124 TIIE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

shall mean a great deal. So it is with words and ar- 
guments, and he is the most effective sermonizer who 
makes every phrase, and illustration, and proof tell 
with all possible force. 

Thus far, all are agreed, but there is a difference of 
opinion among authorities on the question w r hether 
this arrangement should be set before the hearers by 
the distinct announcement of the separate steps. On 
the one hand some have affirmed that " in many 
cases the divisions that are so formally announced are 
little better than a disguise of the heaviness of the 
discourse ;"* and on the other it is alleged that " to 
the mass of hearers, concealed method is much the 
same as none/'f It must be admitted, too, that the 
practice of formally giving out firstly, secondly, etc., 
has become rather unfashionable. Still it has many 
advantages to recommend it, but though it is my 
own general custom, my advice would be that you 
should not bind yourselves by any inexorable rule on 
such a matter. What is most of all to be avoided in 
the ministrations of the pulpit, is leaden uniformity. 
The sermon should never be stereotyped either in 
matter or in form. The preacher must vary his methods 
with judicious frequency ; and while he has always the 
virtue of arrangement, he may sometimes allow it to 
exercise its force so irresistibly, that it will not need 
to be fore-heralded by announcement ; and sometimes 
he may give out his heads without any danger of be- 



* Blaikie's u For the Work of the Ministry," p. 184. 
t Jay's " Autobiography," p. 138. 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. j 2 $ 

ing dull. It is not the announcing of the heads that 
makes a discourse heavy, but rather the fact that after 
they are announced, they are found to have no 
brains ! 

No man can be a sculptor without a competent 
knowledge of anatomy ; but there is a marvelous differ- 
ence between a skeleton and a statue. No preacher 
can succeed who has not in his discourse some princi- 
ple of arrangement, but a syllogism is not a sermon. 
If the order is all in all, the discourse will be a syllabus ; 
but if there be no order at all, it will be an aimless 
harangue ; and in either case, it will be a failure. 
The guerilla soldier may now and then do a dashing 
thing, which harasses the enemy, and helps to secure 
success ; but in a war the main reliance must be 
placed on the regular army, and for its operations or- 
der is essential. So, now and then an impulsive and 
energetic man may carry all before him by the force 
of mere explosiveness ; but for constant effectiveness, 
there is nothing like method — only, the method must 
ever be your servant, and never your master. 

I only add, in this connection, that a sermon, to be 
effective, must not be inordinately long. When 
weariness begins to be felt by the hearer, edification 
ends, and sometimes the latter portion of a discourse 
only effaces the impression which the earlier has 
made. No matter how many other excellences a 
preacher may have, they will all be neutralized if he 
habitually err in this respect. Even such eloquence as 
that of Edward Irving could not hold an audience 
Sabbath after Sabbath for the two hours and a half 



I2 6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

which he was resolved " he would have the privilege 
of;" and there is such a thing yet in the pulpit as 
flailing away at over-threshed straw, until the ears of 
the hearers, deafened by the din, seek refuge in the 
unconsciousness of sleep. 

But while we condemn inordinate length as fatal, 
it does not therefore follow, that brevity is in and of 
itself an excellence. "How long did I preach ?" 
said a young man to the venerable pastor whose pul- 
pit he had been occupying for the morning. " Just 
twelve minutes/' was the response. " I am glad of 
that," replied the elated freshman, " for I never like 
to be tedious/' " O ! but you were tedious," said the 
old man, with a quiet irony, which extinguished him. 
It is possible for one man to be even more dreary in 
ten minutes, than another would be in an hour 
and a half; and in these days when the demand is 
that discourses shall be measured off by the hour- 
glass, as the merchant disposes of dry-goods by the 
yard, and when it is almost an unpardonable sin if a 
preacher shall require the attention of his audience 
for more than thirty minutes, we need to give em- 
phasis to the truth that the length of an address, 
whether in the pulpit or elsewhere, ought to be de- 
termined by the nature of the subject to which it is de- 
voted. If that can be clearly opened up and faithful- 
ly enforced in twenty minutes, then there is no need 
to take more ; if, however, that cannot be done in less 
than an hour, then, even such an amount of time 
should be cheerfully conceded to it. The preacher 
should stop when he has reached a conclusion ; that 
is, when he has brought his arguments and illustra- 



QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING. I2 / 

tions to such a focus that the truth he means to es- 
tablish is burned in on the souls of those whom he ad- 
dresses. If he go on after that, his continuance is an 
impertinence ; but if he end before that, his sermon 
is a fragment, and will lead to no result. 

In this view of the case, few things are of sadder 
omen for the churches than the unreasoning clamoi 
for brevity in sermons which is so universal among 
the people ; for if the pulpit is to be the place of in- 
struction, he who speaks from it must have a certain 
latitude given him, in the matter of time, in order 
that he may be faithful to the trust which has been 
committed to him. The teacher of chemistry, or of 
ethics, or of political economy, or of social economics, 
is allowed ample scope when he comes to the plat- 
form ; and as the minister is also the teacher of the 
doctrines of the Word of God, the same privilege 
ought to be accorded to him. Let any one attempt 
to unfold the Scriptural truth about faith, or repent- 
ance, or the atonement, or justification, or regeneration, 
or eternal judgment, or even any one aspect of these 
subjects in fifteen minutes, and he will see how utter- 
ly hopeless his undertaking is. So if we are shut up 
to a certain statutory allowance of so many minutes, 
the results will be that doctrinal instruction and 
tematic exposition of the sacred Scriptures will be 
banished from the sanctuary, and we shall train a 
generation of spiritual infants, to whom it may be said 
that "when for the time they ought to be teachers, 
they need that one should teach them again what be 
the first principles of the oracles of God."''" 

* Hebrews v. 12. 



I2 8 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Men may make themselves merry, indeed, over 
the long sermons of our Puritan forefathers, with their 
ninthlies of the thirteenth head, but we should not 
forget that those who relished the discourses of Howe, 
and Owen, and Baxter, were the strong heroes who 
Avon the liberties of England, and the near kinsmen 
of the noble pilgrims who laid the foundations of this 
republic. Depend upon it, if ever the pulpit shall 
cease to be a vehicle of instruction, and sink into a 
place for the public reading of pretty little essays, or 
the utterance of fifteen minutes of rose-water senti- 
mentalism, our people will dwindle into spiritual 
dwarfs, and the manhood will disappear from their 
piety. 

Of course, there is a proper medium to be observed 
in this as in other matters, and we must never forget 
that while brevity is not in itself considered a mark 
of excellence, inordinate length will mar the force 
even of the noblest production. We must teach men 
" as they are able to bear it," and if we are dealing 
with great subjects in a way to interest and instruct 
the hearers, a little common sense will be of more use 
to us than any rigid rule in determining the length of 
our discourse. He who is saying nothing, cannot have 
done too soon. He who is saying something, will al- 
ways say that best in the fewest words. When the 
nail is driven home, all after-hammering is superfluous ; 
but if we stop before we have driven it home, we might 
as well never have begun to drive it. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON — IN THE 
PREACHER. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE QUALITIES' OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON — 
IN THE PREACHER. 

IN speaking of the qualities of an effective sermon, 
so far as these are in the preacher, I shall not 
refer to literary culture or elocutionary skill, though 
these in their own places have an importance 
not to be overlooked ; but I shall confine my atten- 
tion to those spiritual elements of power which have 
their source in the convictions and character of the 
minister himself. 

And foremost among these I name earnestness. 
But wherein does earnestness consist? The ques- 
tion is by no means unnecessary, for the term has 
become one of the " cant " words of the time, and in 
the frequency of its use we are apt to lose sight of 
its true significance. 

We must not confound it with mere vehemence of 
manner. Rant is not intensity, neither is noise ear- 
nestness. Too often the " sound and fury " signify 
" nothing ;" and sometimes as I have been compelled 
to listen to preachers of the noisy school, I have 
thought that they had taken their cue from Quince 
in his description of the lion's part, when he says, 
" You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but 
That is, and always must be, ridiculous, 



* Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act I., Scone II. 

(131) 



132 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



and the antics which such orators cut remind me of 
the position once occupied by a dignified professor 
of divinity, when, being in a boat with a party, and 
thinking he could row with ease, he took an oar, 
and at the second or third stroke " caught a crab," 
so that he lay sprawling, hands and heels uppermost, 
in a most ludicrous plight, and was thus addressed 
by his venerable mother, " Less pith, and more to 
the purpose, my man !" Let the " pith " be all " to 
the purpose," gentlemen, for it is in the purpose first 
and always that the earnestness must lie. It is not 
a manner which can be put on from without, but an 
influence, say, rather, an effluence, which must ema- 
nate from within. It cannot be acquired by any prac- 
tice, or successfully imitated from any model. Nei- 
ther can it be simulated by any process. It is part 
of the man. 

It springs out of an unwavering conviction of the 
truth of that which we are at the moment preaching, 
and of the fact that just that truth needs to be spoken 
to our hearers. If we have not made up our minds 
upon a subject, we cannot kindle into enthusiasm 
over its treatment ; and he who has not yet brought 
the ends of his thoughts together on any matter, 
should keep that matter out of the pulpit until he 
has. It is the irrepressible in a man that makes him 
earnest. If he can keep anything in, then let him 
keep it, for such a thing, generally speaking, is not 
worth letting out, and his utterance of it will have no 
force. But when it comes to such a point with him that 
he feels like the old prophet who said, " His word was 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, j^ 

in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, 
and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not 
stay/'* then he will speak in such a way as to thrill 
and overawe his hearers. When, like Peter before 
the council, he is as if under some inner impulsion, 
and says, " I cannot but speak,"f or when, like Paul, 
he cries, " Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto 
me if I preach not," then his earnestness will come as 
a thing of course, and there will be as much difference 
between his words and those of the mere rhetorician, 
as there is between the mimic thunder of the theatre 
and the reverberations of the cloud-artillery as they 
are redoubled by the Alpine echoes. 

In the lack of this, as it seems to me, we have the 
secret of the easy nonchalance, not to say indiffer- 
ence, which many hearers complain of in the minis- 
trations of the modern pulpit. The preacher fills up 
the time with talk, because he must say something. 
He does not go into the sacred desk under the ab- 
sorbing impulse of the feeling that he has something 
which he must say. So he is aimless and uninterest- 
ing, and fails to impress others because he is unim- 
pressed himself. It cannot be too constantly remem- 
bered by you, that your usefulness to others must 
depend, next to the influence of God's Spirit, upon 
the intensity of your own convictions. There is 
nothing so contagious as conviction. The percep- 
tion that you are well assured of the truth of that 
which you affirm, will help your hearers into the same 



* Jeremiah xx. 9. t Acts iv. 



134 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

certainty ; and often in the times when their faith is 
sorely tried and is almost ready to fail, their observa- 
tion of your confidence will lift them into trust. 
Their reliance on you will lead them to believe in 
w r hat you say. But if you devote your sermons to 
the enumeration and illustration of the things which 
you do not believe ; if you are careful only to discuss * 
the points on which you are either undecided or out 
of harmony with other and more ordinary men, you 
will produce anything but conviction, and will win 
from the more intelligent of your hearers the criti- 
cism pronounced by Johnson on Dr. Priestley, " He 
unsettles everything and settles nothing.'' 

If, therefore, you have no positive convictions, keep 
out of the pulpit until you get them ; and when you 
get them, they will make for themselves a manly and 
earnest utterance. Do not, I beseech you, enter upon 
a pastorate professing, in a fashion, to hold certain 
truths which yet are not such to you, as that you feel 
you must preach them a# all hazards. Such a posi- 
tion will be fatal to usefulness. Shape to yourselves 
clear and definite views regarding " the truth as it is 
in Jesus," and let the measure of your love to Him 
be that also of the firmness with which you hold them ; 
so shall the fervor of your affection for your Lord 
inspire and energize your utterances. " We, having 
the same spirit of faith according as it is written, I 
believed, and, therefore, have I spoken, we also be- 
lieve and therefore speak."* Mark the force of that 

* 2 Cor. iv. 13. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, iq 

" therefore ;" it is the hinge on which all true earnest- 
ness turns ; without that your words will be little 
better than " drowsy tinklings ; " with that they 
will be full of force, and you will be like him of 'whom 
the poet^ speaks, as on a " throne mounted in heav- 
en/' and shooting " into the dark, arrows of lighten- 
ing." 

But another element of earnestness is a vivid real- 
ization of the position of our hearers. Let a man 
have the firm belief that he is dealing with immortal 
souls ; that unless these souls embrace the Lord Jesus 
Christ and live in obedience to His laws, they must 
perish everlastingly ; and that he is set to persuade 
them to choose that " good part which cannot be 
taken away " from them, and he cannot help being 
earnest in his appeals to them. 

When one reads in the biography of that great and 
good man after whom this lectureship is named, that 
his six sermons on " Intemperance " were preached 
in order that he might save some of the members of 
his congregation whom he most tenderly loved, from 
the horrible hell of the drunkard, we have at once 
the explanation of their scorching earnestness and of 
their irresistible power. 

In the same way we account for the fiery logic of 
the Epistle to the Galatians. The apostle saw that 
the truth of the Gospel was endangered, and that those 
beloved ones over whose conversion he had rejoiced 
were in the greatest peril, and so he sat down, and with 



Tennyson. Sonnet to J. M. K. 



!^6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

his own hand he wrote to them, in large letters, that 
epistle wherein " the arrows of his thoughts " are 
" headed and winged with flame." Here is the ex- 
planation of its passionate energy, its scathing invec- 
tive, its rapid movement, its parental tenderness, and 
its condensed power. He saw them in danger, and 
he was in haste to rescue them. His one great aim 
was to open their eyes to their real position, and to 
bring them back to the security that is in Christ. I 
do not say that he was not in earnest in all his epistles, 
but we cannot read that letter without feeling that 
he was peculiarly moved when he penned it, and 
as a consequence it peculiarly affects us. 

Now, from the difference between that and his 
other writings, we may learn much regarding the 
earnestness of which we are in search. Especially 
w r e discover that the perception of the circumstances 
of those to whom we speak, will give us such con- 
cern for their welfare that we shall lose sight of all 
things else in the effort to secure their salvation. 
There is no mistaking the earnestness of him who 
runs from the burning dwelling to cry " Fire ! fire !" 
He sees the evil ; he knows that if means be not taken 
promptly to extinguish the flames the house must be 
destroyed ; and so he does not take it leisurely, but 
rushes on along the nearest way to the engine-house. 
And it is the same in the pulpit. When the salva- 
tion of souls or the benefit of men in some special 
direction is the uppermost object in the preacher's 
ambition, earnestness will come unsought ; but without 
that it can never be attained. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, i^y 

A Summer or two ago, a clergyman of the Church 
of England, who was taking a holiday in Switzerland, 
came, in one of the mountain passes of that land, to 
a place of considerable danger, and as he was thread- 
ing his way with care, he heard a piercing shriek, 
w r hich, at length, he found proceeded from a lady, 
who was down on the side of the precipice in a posi- 
tion of awful peril, and who was crying for assistance. 
Taking a hasty survey of the situation, he went by 
what seemed to him the best way to her relief, and 
after making great efforts, he succeeded in bringing 
her with him to a place of safety. The next day he 
went with a friend to show him the spot, but though 
he tried very hard, he found that he could not get 
anywhere near it. Would you know the reason of 
this difference? In the former instance there was a 
life to be saved ; in the latter there was only a display 
to be made. Let not the lesson be lost upon us. We 
shall always do most, my young brethren, when we 
are directly seeking to save souls ; but when we are 
working only for display, we shall inevitably fail. If 
you keep your eye on the end to be gained, you will 
be sure to be earnest ; but when you attempt to show 
how you have done it, or how you can do it, the 
earnestness will evaporate. 

Think, then, ever as you enter the pulpit on the po- 
sition and necessities of your hearers. See in them 
a company of fellow immortals, each of whom is 
needing your help in the great struggle of life, and in 
your eagerness to assist them, all thoughts of self \\ ill 
die out of your soul. Your hearts will be filled with 



I3 8 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

yearning affection for them, and that itself will be a 
power over them, for as one" has said : 

" If mountains can be moved by faith, 
Is there less power in love ?" 

All your words will be made to converge toward 
the great result on which your heart is fixed ; and^. 
your ministry, as a whole, will grow in interest under 
your eyes, as you watch week by week for the effects 
of your labors. 

Here, then, are the twin sources of that earnestness 
of which so much is said, namely, intellectual convic- 
tion of the truth of those things which we proclaim ; 
and loving realization of the fact that our hearers need 
to have these things said to them in order to be saved 
from the evils of time and the perdition of eternity. 
Give us these in all the occupants of all our pulpits, 
and the world will be constrained to listen to them. 
There is no royal road to earnestness ; neither can it 
be successfully counterfeited by any histrionic art. 
We can gain it only through personal conviction and 
pervasive love ; but, when we do gain it, we do not so 
much possess it as it possesses us, and carries us out 
of ourselves to achievements which are as astonishing 
to ourselves as they are irresistible to those whom we 
address. 

A second quality of effectiveness in the preacher is 
courage. It is said of the apostles that " they spake 



* Frederick William Faber. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, j^g 

the Word of God with boldness ;"* and all who since 
their days have been signally successful in the winning 
of souls have been distinguished by the same charac- 
teristic. They have " not shunned to declare all the 
counsel of God."f They have used " great plainness 
of speech," calling things by their right names, and 
exposing, when need was, the evils which existed in 
the Church, in the home, and in the community. 
John of the golden mouth would not have been so 
blessed to the citizens of Antioch and Constantinople, 
if he had not been so fearless in his denunciations of 
corruptions, no matter in what rank of society they 
appeared ; and if Luther had not possessed " the spirit 
and power of Elijah," the Reformation from popery 
had not resulted from his labors. 

It may seem strange that I should connect such 
great names as these with the enforcement of the cul- 
tivation of courage upon you, but even if your lot 
should be cast in the humblest village, let me assure 
you from my own experience, that it will require as 
much heroism to breast the tide of antagonism there, 
as it does in the largest city. " The fear of man 
bringeth a snare ;" therefore, when you enter the 
pulpit, let all considerations of personal comfort or 
interest sink out of sight, while you seek to enforce 
upon your hearers that which is " right in the sight 
of God." If you are determined only to set forth 
the truth of God, you may rely upon it that God 
will take care of you. 

* Acts iv. 31. t Acts xx. 2;. 



I40 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

I say not, indeed, that you are at liberty to in- 
dulge in personal invective in your discourses. If 
you have anything against any individual among 
your flock, " go and tell him his fault between thee 
and him alone ;" but be not guilty of the cowardice 
of attacking him in the house of God, when he has 
no opportunity of reply. Impertinence is not faith- 
fulness, and rudeness is not Christian courage. If 
you mean to do good to a man, the very worst course 
you can take is to begin by insulting him. Be as 
fearless as you please in the denunciation of sins, but 
take care that you do not so describe an individual 
sinner as to enable all your hearers to identify him. 
Men come to the house of God to be preached to, not 
to be preached at, and your aim should be to secure 
that each auditor shall make application to himself of 
the truth which you are enforcing. Generally speak- 
ing, the hearers of our discourses are inclined of them- 
selves to be amazingly benevolent with our words, 
and will, without any help of ours, give them all away 
among their neighbors. It is not for us, therefore, to 
pander to that tendency by striking plainly at certain 
individuals. Our duty rather is to concentrate the 
thoughts of each upon himself, so that the one arrow 
which we send forth, may, by the power of the divine 
Spirit, be multiplied to the piercing of a thousand 
hearts. 

But w T hile we avoid all invidious personalities, we 
must be careful not to keep back any part of the 
truth from the fear of offending any prominent indi- 
vidual, or provoking " Demetrius and the craftsmen." 



THE QUALITIES OF AAT EFFECTIVE SERMON. I ^i 

We must preach the preaching that God bids us, " di- 
minishing not a word ;"** and if men will take offence, 
we must see to it, that the cause of their indignation 
shall be in the truth itself and not in our manner of 
proclaiming it. 

Now there is only one way of securing this, and that 
is by cultivating faith in the unseen presence of Christ 
with us. We must preach as Moses endured, f "as 
seeing Him who is invisible." That will both lift, us 
above the fear of men and keep us from saying any- 
thing which would be inconsistent with his precepts and 
example. We complicate matters so soon as we be- 
gin to ask, What will this man think ? or, How will that 
one feel ? or, Will not this seriously affect my future 
comfort ? or the church's financial condition ? In each 
of these directions humiliation and failure lie. Our 
safety is in the consciousness of the presence of Christ. 
There will be no difficulty about what we ought to 
say, or how we ought to say it, so long as we think 
of pleasing Him, but the moment any regard to self- 
interest intrudes, embarrassment begins. 

Moreover, if we yield to these selfish temptations, 
we are sure in the end to miss the comfort which we 
have been seeking. " He that loveth his life " thus, 
" will lose it/'f for the timid trimmer who is always 
trying to keep from offence, becomes at length an ob- 
ject of contempt ; while he who faithfully reproves, 
rebukes, and exhorts with all long-suffering and doc- 
trine, becomes a power in the community, and draws 

* Jeremiah xxvi. 2. I Hebrews xi. 27. ( John xii. 25. 



1 42 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

to himself the confidence and affection of his people. 
The sycophant is despised even by those on whom he 
fawns, but he who speaks to men in the assurance 
that God is with him, will secure both their attention 
and respect, even when he is telling them unpalatable 
truths. John the Baptist was popular just because 
he was pungent ; and the most attractive preachers of 
our own days are those who are most courageous in 
their antagonism to existing evils. 

But even if that were not the case, it would still be 
our duty to keep back from our hearers nothing that 
will be profitable unto them ; to seek their good, 
rather than their good opinion ; and to set clearly be- 
fore them the solemn responsibilities of life. This is 
demanded of us alike by loyalty to God, a regard for 
the welfare of those w T ho wait upon our ministry, and 
a consideration of the account which we ourselves 
must give. To each of us God says as He did to Eze- 
kiel, " O, son of man, I have set thee a watchman 
unto the house of thy people ; therefore, thou shalt 
hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. 
When I say unto the wicked, O, wicked man, thou 
shalt surely die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the 
wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his 
iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand."* 
When we remember that, and have besides the con- 
sciousness that he is near us who has said,f " Lo I am 
with you always, even unto the end of the world," 
the fear of man will be banished by the desire to 



* Ezekiel xxxiii. 7-8. f Matthew xxviii. 20. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON. ^3 

serve God, and there will be that about us which will 
make our hearers feel that it is with God, rather than 
with us, that they have specially to do. " The Lord 
God of Israel, before whom I stand," said Elijah when 
he confronted Ahab, and in these words we have the 
open secret of his dauntless demeanor. Let us stand 
consciously in the presence of the living God when 
we are in the pulpit, and every other feeling and fear 
will be overmastered in the determination to be faith- 
ful to Him in the service of our people. 

The minister's bearing should be in keeping with 
the words of Paul, " I am not ashamed of the gospel 
of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth ; "* and when he feels in that 
way, he will be ready to preach it anywhere, whether 
in the centres of intellectual culture and fashionable 
refinement, or in the haunts of wickedness, where 
Satan has his seat. When we begin to apologize for 
the truth, or in any way to lower the flag of Him 
whose messengers we are before the arrogance of the 
world, our influence is on the wane. But with courage 
in our hearts, the battle is half won, even before we 
enter the lists ; and when men see our boldness, they 
will " take knowledge of us that we have been with 
Jesus, f " Our bodily presence may be " weak " and 
our "speech contemptible," but our boldness, if it be 
seen to spring from our conviction that God is with 
us, will be itself a sermon, and will make men sax- 
regarding us, as was said of an humble Scottish pas- 



* Romans i. 16. t Acts iv. 13. 



144 THE MimsTRY 0F THE word. 

tor, " That man preaches as if the Lord Jesus Christ 
was at his elbow." So preached the first apostles, 
and so must we if we are to have repeated among us 
the blessings of Pentecost or the successes of the early 
Church. 

But as another element of effectiveness in the 
preacher, I name tenderness. It may be thought by 
some that this is thoroughly incompatible with 
courage, but in reality it is only its complement. 
Without tenderness the courage would stiffen into 
harshness. Without courage the tenderness would 
degenerate into tepid sentimentalism. In the union 
of the two, we get the highest excellence of both ; 
the tenderness shading the courage into loving faith- 
fulness ; and the courage giving principle to the 
tenderness, so that its manifestation is in harmony 
with rectitude. How admirably these qualities w r ere 
blended in Paul ! We think of him usually, indeed, 
as the stern reprover, the dauntless hero, the uncom- 
promising champion of truth, but there were in his 
soul great fountains of tenderness, which ever and 
anon overflowed in tears. Thus he tells the Thessa- 
lonians that he was " gentle among them " as " a nurse 
cherishing her children ; "* and when he was con- 
strained in his letter to the Philippiansf to testify 
against some who were " the enemies of the cross of 
Christ," he did so, " even weeping." So also among 
the Ephesians, \ " by the space of three years he 



* i Thess. ii. 7. f Phil. iii. 18. % Acts xx - 3 1 - 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON. 145 

ceased not to warn every one night and day with 
tears." Now there is no doubt that in this gentleness 
lay much of his power. 

And he was, in this respect, only the follower of 
the Lord Jesus himself. How tenderly He dealt with 
the Pharisaic Nicodemus, as well as with the woman 
at the well ! How lovingly He received the publicans 
and sinners when they came unto Him! How like a 
mother with her children He was in His training of 
His disciples, teaching them as they were willing to 
be taught, dealing with them often in the way of 
indirectness, and having ever as the background even 
of His reproofs, His love, shading and softening its 
severity; yet, singularly enough, making it thereby 
only the more effective. Truly, by " His gentleness " 
He made them " great. " And, if we would educate 
our people into lives of holiness, we must imbibe 
His spirit. 

Many men are all courage, and many are all tender- 
ness. But few combine them in one and the same 
address, yet that is what is most needed in our pul- 
pits in these days. We want the amalgamation of 
the two, for the tenderest things are then most apt to 
stir up to practical reformation when they are uttered 
by one whose courage has not flinched from the 
proclamation of God's law; and the sternest things 
are then the strongest, when the tear-drop quivers in 
the eye of him who utters them. When, therefore, we 
are in the tender mood, we ought to give good heed 
that we manifest courage ; and when we are dealing 
in the terror of the Lord, then is the time to culti- 
vate peculiar tenderness. 7 



!^6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

But how shall we acquire this gentleness? There 
is but one answer, by remembering what we were 
ourselves, and how God dealt with us. Very sugges- 
tive here, to us all, is the case of John Newton — great, 
strong man that he was, but with a heart as 
tender as his intellect was vigorous.* Jay tells the 
following story of an interview with him : " When I 
one day called upon him, he said, ' I am glad to see 
you, for I have just received a letter from Bath, and 
you may know something of the writer/ mentioning 
his name. I told him I did, and that he had been for 
years a hearer of mine, but he was a most awful 
character, and almost in all evil. l But/ said he, ' he 
writes now like a penitent/ I said, i He may be such, 
but if he be, I shall never despair of the conversion 
of any one again.' ' Oh ! ' said he, ' I never did since 
God saved me.' And the same authority informs us 
that on the wall of his study at Olney, just over his 
desk, he had in very large letters these words, " Re- 
member that thou wast a bondman in the land of 
Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee." Who 
can doubt that in the spirit which prompted him to 
put these words there, we have the secret of his 
power in dealing with hardened sinners? and the 
source whence flowed those Cardiphonia which have 
so refreshed every reader of his works. When Jesus 
healed the leper, He touched him, and thereby He did 
as much good to the poor man's soul as to his body ; 
" for here" might the outcast sufferer have said, " is 

* Autobiography and Reminiscences of the Rev. William Jay, 
pp. 275-277. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, i^y 

one, and He the purest of them all, who is not ashamed 
to come into contact with me." So if we would 
benefit men we must come into heart contact with 
them. But how is that to be accomplished ? Let 
our common speech instruct us. We say of a tender 
utterance, that it is " touching." So, by the hand of 
gentleness, we touch the soul of the hearer, and if we 
be ourselves in sympathy with Jesus, having our other 
hand of faith in His, there will be healing in the touch. 
" Virtue will go out of us," and in the strength of 
that, the sinner will be encouraged to seek his Saviour. 

But no make-believe gentleness will produce such 
effects. To be thus operative our tenderness must be 
true. The falsetto of the melodrama has no efficacy 
in the pulpit. The tear that drops upon our Bible 
must be sincere ; ** and so again we come back to 
those elements of earnestness on which already I have 
so fully insisted, for only when we are intensely con- 
vinced of the truth of what we say, and have a vivid 
realization of the circumstances of our hearers, can 
we be really compassionate. 

"And Jesus saw a great multitude, and was moved 
with compassion toward them. " f How often, as I 
have entered my pulpit, have these words come rush- 
ing into my heart ; and if I have been in an}' degree 
successful in comforting the sorrowful or directing the 
perplexed, or strengthening the tempted, it has been 
because I have tried to take for mv motto as a 



* See Cowper's Eulogy of Whitefield in his poem on Hope. 
t Matt. xiv. 14. 



148 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



preacher the words of my Master, " I will not send 
them away fasting, lest they faint in the way." * 

The nearer you keep to Him, and the more closely 
you study the necessities of your people, the more 
easy will it be for you to be gentle toward them. 
Never forget that they are always needing help ; and 
remember always, that you are the servant of Him 
of whom it was said, " A bruised reed shall he not 
break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench." 
Then tenderness will come to you as the habit of 
your Christian life, and will give its soft and search- 
ing undertone to all your words. 

But I have said nothing in all this regarding the 
manner of delivery ; and I have not touched upon 
the vexed question of the use of the manuscript. 
Nor is there any necessity that I should go at any 
length into the consideration of such matters. Given 
burning earnestness, unflinching courage, and sympa- 
thetic tenderness in the preacher, and those other 
things may be very safely left to take care of them- 
selves. He who is characterized by these three quali- 
ties, will very soon come to the discovery of what is 
best for him, and will ultimately concentrate his ener- 
gies on the doing of that effectively. One man here, 
cannot lay down the law for another ; neither ought 
one man to cavil at or condemn the practice of an- 
other. The preacher who rivets the attention of the 
hearer, and moves his heart, and leads him for the 

* Matt. xv. 32. 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON, j^g 

moment to forget everything but the truth which is 
set before him, has thereby vindicated his own excel- 
lence, no matter what plan he has adopted. That a 
manuscript must necessarily impair the power of a 
speaker, cannot be successfully maintained in the face 
of such cases as those of Edwards and Chalmers. 
That free speech must always promote efficiency in 
the pulpit, will not be assented to by those who are 
condemned to listen from time to time to men who 
are more remarkable for fluency than for force. A 
discourse may be delivered with as little animation 
or fervor as if it had been read with the most 
slavish closeness ; and another may be read with as 
much freedom and fire as if it had been delivered. 

Abstractly, of course, there can be no doubt that 
free speech is the normal method for the pulpit. Yet, 
a question like this is not to be settled on mere ab- 
stract principles ; and the very fact that different ways 
have been adopted by different men, all of whom were 
first-rate preachers, is a proof that no one mode can 
be declared to be the only best. Some, having writ- 
ten their discourse fully, commit it to memory, and 
deliver it verbatim. This plan has been supposed by 
many to involve tremendous drudgery ; and I sup- 
pose that they who so speak regarding it, would find 
it to be a dreadful task. But, having myself prac- 
ticed it for the first ten years of my ministry, I can 
attest that it did not in any degree hamper me. "The 
memory," as Jay has said, " is like a friend, and loves 
to be trusted," so that the labor of an hour and a 



i5o 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



half came with me to be sufficient for the masteiy 
of a discourse that was newly-written ; and I own 
to a feeling of regret that I ever gave up the practice. 
Still, I found that the more carefully I had prepared a 
sermon, it was the more difficult to commit it to 
memory; and as it was just then that I wished to 
give it with verbal accuracy, I was led to put the 
manuscript before me, and use it as occasion required. 
After I had done that a few times, I discovered that 
I had lost my facility in remembering, and so, ever since, 
having no aptitude whatever for extempore speech, I 
have endeavored to train myself to use a manuscript 
with effect. If I might speak from my own expe- 
rience, therefore, I would Bay, that memoriter preach- 
ing is the method which has the greatest advantages, 
with the fewest disadvantages ; extempore preach- 
ing is the method in the employment of which suc- 
cess is hardest, and failure commonest ; and preaching 
from a manuscript is the method in which, if he choose 
to train himself in it, the man of average ability will 
make, on the whole, the best of his talents, and make 
the fewest failures. There are not above half a score 
of men in a century who can rise to the foremost 
places for usefulness and eminence through extem- 
pore speech. If you be one of these, there will be in 
you that irrepressibility which is the mark of genius, 
and which will force itself out at length against every 
obstacle. If you be not one of these, then, with all 
respect to those who I know differ from me on this 
subject, I do not hesitate to say, that it will be ten 



THE QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE SERMON. 151 

times better for you, and a thousand times better for 
your hearers, that you should educate yourself into 
the free and unfettered use of a full manuscript. 

Observe what I have said, " educate yourself into 
the free and unfettered use of a full manuscript. " I 
do not mean that you should keep your face close to 
the desk, and never lift your eyes from the page 
unless it be to look right up into the ventilator that 
is overhead ; but that you should preach from your 
manuscript. Write in a fair, round, legible hand ; 
marking the beginnings of your sentences, and the 
different stages of your argument in such a way that 
your eye may easily catch them. Spend a couple of 
hours with your manuscript before you enter the pul- 
pit, seeking to catch the spirit of your theme and to 
kindle under the enthusiasm of your words. Do not 
disdain to attend to such little matters as the folding 
up of the corner of each page, so that you may turn 
it over without hindrance. And above all, remember 
whose messenger you are, and what you design to 
attain through the special message which you mean 
to deliver. Rise to your work from your knees, and 
then your manuscript will be no more a hindrance to 
you than its wings are to the bird, or its sails are to 
the ship. It will help you to rise ; it will give energy 
to your movement ; it will give calmness to your soul 
even in your most impassioned moments, and before 
you have gone on many minutes, youi hearers will 
forget alike the manuscript and yourself in their 
solemn appreciation of the truth you speak. 

Make your choice of the method which suits you 



152 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 



best, seek to do your best in that method, and do 
both out of regard to Jesus and the souls of men. It 
is not the manuscript that either makes or mars 
efficiency, it is the man behind it. . If he be cold, the 
absence of the paper will not make him warm ; but 
if he be on fire, the paper, as in the case of Chalmers, 
may only make the blaze the stronger. 



LECTURE VII. 

EXPOSITORY PREACHING. 



LECTURE VII. 

EXPOSITORY PREACHING. 

T3 Y expository preaching, I mean that method of 
-*— ' pulpit discourse which consists in the consecu- 
tive interpretation, and practical enforcement, of a 
book of the sacred canon. It differs, thus, from top- 
ical preaching, which may be described as the selec- 
tion of a clause, or verse, or section of the inspired 
Word, from which some one principle is evolved and 
kept continuously before the hearer's mind, as the 
speaker traces its manifold applications to present 
circumstances, and to human life ; from doctrinal 
preaching, which prosecutes a system of Biblical in- 
duction in regard to some great truth, such as justifi- 
cation, regeneration, the atonement, or the like, gath- 
ering together all the portions of holy writ that bear 
upon it, and deducing from them some formulated 
inference ; from hortatory preaching, which sets itself 
to the enforcement of some neglected duty, or the 
exposure of some prevalent iniquity ; and from bio- 
graphical preaching, which, taking some Scripture 
character for its theme, gives an analysis of the moral 
nature of the man, like that which Bishop Butler has 
made in his wonderful discourse on Balaam, and 
points from it lessons of warning or example. 

(i 55 ) 



JJ6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

But, though thus distinct from each other, these 
several methods of pulpit discourse are not inconsis- 
tent with each other. Into every sermon exposition 
must, in some degree, enter. It must, indeed, form 
the foundation on which every discourse must be 
reared, if, at least, it is to be a sermon proper, and 
not a mere essay, or lecture, such as one may hear at 
an ordinary Lyceum. Moreover, into the regularly 
maintained expository series, all these other elements 
of topical, doctrinal, hortatory, and biographic inter- 
est will come, if only the preacher will intelligently 
follow the course of argument or narrative taken by 
the inspired writer whose work he is seeking to inter- 
pret. Practically, therefore, the differentia of the 
method of preaching of which I am now to treat, is 
its continuous and consecutive character, giving, as 
it does, a connected view either of a history or a 
treatise. 

Now, on the very threshold of our plea, let it be 
distinctly understood, that I do not advocate this 
mode of discourse to the disparagement or neglect of 
all others. He who desires to be an efficient minis- 
ter will endeavor in his public teachings to combine 
them all. My own practice has been, for many years, 
to give up one of the services of each Lord's day to 
the systematic exposition of some book of Scripture, 
leaving the other free for the presentation of such 
subjects as may be suggested to me by the occur- 
rences of the times, or the circumstances of my people. 
This division I have felt to be not only very con- 
venient, but also extremely serviceable. You will 



EXPOSITOR Y PREACHING. 



157 



remember, therefore, that in my after-remarks I do 
not desire to exalt expository preaching above all 
other varieties of pulpit discourse, far less to urge 
it upon ministers and students to the neglect of 
every other method. But, as it seems to me that 
this mode has fallen somewhat into reproach and 
disuetude among us, I wish to speak a few earnest 
words in favor of its revival and more general adop- 
tion. 

Exposition is the presentation to the people, in an 
intelligible and forcible manner, of the meaning of the 
sacred writer which has been first settled by the 
preacher for himself, by the use of those grammatical 
and historical instruments with which his preparatory 
training has furnished him. It is not the mere dilu- 
tion of the statements of the sacred writer by the 
repetition of his thought in language necessarily less 
forcible than his own, for that would make it only a 
weak and watery paraphrase of the original. Neither 
is it the learned and exhaustive enumeration of all 
the interpretations which commentators, ancient and 
modern, have given of it. Still less is it the utterance 
of a few pious platitudes in the way of inference from 
it. But it is the giving of a simple statement of the 
writer's meaning, with the grounds on which the 
explanation rests, and the lessons which it suggests 
whether fo? " doctrine, reproof, correction, or in- 
struction, in righteousness. " It is the honest answer 
which the preacher gives, after faithful stud}', to these 
questions, "What is the mind of the Holy Spirit in 
this passage? and what is its bearing on related 



i 5 8 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



Christian truths, or on the life and conversation of 
the Christian himself?" If it be an argument that is 
before him, he will analyze it from its premises to its 
conclusion, noting the different steps in the process, 
marking the illustrations with which it is accompanied, 
and pointing out its pertinency to the primary pur- 
pose of the writer, as well as emphasizing its perma- 
nent importance in the department of doctrine or of 
duty. If it be a narrative, he will, by the help of the 
historical imagination, seek to give it vividness by 
reproducing the times and circumstances to which it 
belongs ; then going beneath the surface, he will en- 
deavor to discover those principles of the divine ad- 
ministration which it illustrates, and so he will find 
in the inspired record of the past the explanation of 
the present ; and in some degree also the prophecy 
of the future. If it be a parable, he will try to obtain 
the key to its interpretation, in the purpose for which 
it was spoken, or in the occasion out of which it 
sprung, and then he will give unity to his exposition, 
by making everything in it subservient to that, guard- 
ing on the one hand against the spiritualization of 
every minute particular, and on the other against the 
merging of everything into a vague and dreamy gene- 
rality. If it be a prophecy, he will seize the central 
position of the seer, and group every detail around 
that, remembering evermore that " the testimony of 
Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy." In a word, he will 
study thoroughly those inspired expositions of por- 
tions of the Old Testament which are given in the 
Epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews, and those 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. j 5 g 

infallible models of parabolic interpretation which the 
Great Teacher Himself has furnished, and he will 
endeavor to apply the principles on which these are 
constructed to all similar portions of the Word of 
God. 

In dealing with historical subjects, special attention 
should be given to the vivifying of the record by the 
reproduction of the surroundings. People are apt to 
forget that the Bible heroes were men of like passions 
with themselves ; and we should endeavor to give 
humanness to them in all our descriptions. The 
visitor to the Ceramic gallery in the South Kensing- 
ton Museum, reads on the etchings of each window 
the history of the formation of the articles in the sec- 
tion beneath it. He gazes with interest on the 
Chinese productions, and as he looks up he sees upon 
the window a representation of Chinese potters at 
their toil. He admires the singular ware made by 
Palissy, and as he raises his eyes he sees on the win- 
dow the image of the persevering Huguenot, feeding 
his furnace with the broken furniture of his cottage, 
against the protest of his pleading wife. Now, what 
that luminous framework is to each case in that inter- 
esting exhibition, a vivid reproduction of the scenes 
and circumstances of sacred history is to the charac- 
ters of the men that moved in them, and to the truths 
which were proclaimed in connection with them. It 
is the appropriate setting to the precious stone. It 
hangs the picture in a frame that is itself luminous 
and instructive. And treated thus with vigorous im- 
agination and practical purpose, the Bible becomes 



!6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

the most living, the most interesting, and the most 
stimulating of books. 

To do all this well, however, it is evident that great 
labor will be needed, while the attempt will furnish 
occasion for the employment of some of the noblest 
of our intellectual powers. It requires a lively im- 
agination ; a calm, unbiased judgment ; a correct 
scholarship, and a true homiletic instinct, to lay every 
thing under tribute for purposes of instruction and 
edification. Added to these, a large acquaintance 
with modern literature will enable the preacher to 
give interest to his discourses by pointing out the 
parallels which secular history presents to that re- 
corded in the Book of God, or by furnishing him with 
striking illustrations drawn from science or art, from 
nature or from the works of man. 

The method to be pursued in expounding a book 
of Scripture will vary with the nature of the book 
itself, or with the purpose of the expositor. In gene- 
ral, however, it will be well for him before entering 
upon such a work to read the book through, if pos- 
sible, in the original language. Then, he will endeavor 
to divide it into its different sections, mapping out 
his course thus from the first. Then, as each of these 
portions falls to be considered, he will study it care- 
fully, seeking to find some principle of unity in it, 
around which he may crystallize his different proposi- 
tions. Then, w r ith this, his own method in his mind,* 
and having first satisfied himself as to the meaning of 
the section, he will read all that his library contains 
upon the subject (and for the purpose of reference, if 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. ! 6 1 

he be wise, he will construct an index to his library, 
entering upon an interleaved Bible a citation of the 
name and page of every book opposite the verse or 
chapter of which it treats). Then, having thus sat- 
urated his mind with the subject, and seen what 
others have said upon it, he will leave it all to simmer 
and settle for some days, and, at length, sitting down 
with his whole soul concentrated upon the work, he 
will produce a discourse which, by the blessing of 
God, will be at once interesting and instructive, stimu- 
lating and suggestive to his hearers. Thus from week 
to week he will go forward, his spirit kindling into in- 
creasing enthusiasm as he proceeds, so that he will 
forget the labor in the joy. His people, also, catch- 
ing fire from him, will long for the return of the Lord's 
day, that they may renew their study with him, and 
will deeply regret when by sickness, or absence from 
home, they are deprived of one of the series. I have 
seen a slimly attended second service gather back 
into itself all the half-day hearers that had absented 
themselves from it, and draw in others besides, through 
the adoption by the minister of just such a method as 
this ; while the effect, even upon those who have 
dropped casually in upon a single discourse, has been 
to send them away with what one of themselves 
called " a new appetite for the Word of God." 

I am thus brought naturally to the consideration 
of the advantages which are connected with this 
method of ministerial instruction, and among these I 
mention, First, the fact that it brings both precu 



1 62 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

and hearers into direct and immediate contact with 
the mind of the Spirit. The open Bible on the sacred 
desk is the token that both speaker and auditors re- 
gard it as the ultimate standard of appeal. In the 
pulpit the minister is not, ordinarily speaking, dealing 
with those who repudiate the authority of the Word 
of God. The very presence of his people in the 
sanctuary may be taken by him as an admission that 
" they are all present before God, to hear what is 
commanded them of God." There may be excep- 
tional occasions when he feels bound to deal with 
sceptical objectors, but, as a general rule, the pulpit 
is not the place for that. As a brother once said to 
me, " When I am in the pulpit, I am not there to 
defend the Bible ; the Bible is there to defend me." 
The great aim of the preacher ought to be to set 
before the people the mind of God. Now, in so far 
as he is successful, that is precisely what the expositor 
does. In the topical sermon, there may be many of 
his own particular opinions, which are matters of 
"private interpretation," or of "doubtful disputa- 
tion." But when he has succeeded in convincing his 
hearers that he has given the true meaning of the 
passage which he is expounding, he can say, " This is 
the mind of Christ," and the force of that both on 
him and them will be overwhelming. When he so 
speaks, he will speak " with authority and not as the 
scribes," and men will feel that they have been 
brought face to face with God. 

Now, it is in the production of this impression that 
the peculiar power of the pulpit consists. Other men 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. 1 63 

have genius, and can produce wonderful results by 
the flashes of its erratic lightening. Other men have 
stores of information on which they can draw at will, 
and with which they can enrich their utterances. 
Other men have force of logic and power of invective, 
by which they can bear down all opposition. But, so 
long as the preacher is wielding these alone, he has 
not risen to his distinctive office, and is not clothing 
himself with his own peculiar power. That which 
gives him the might over men which every true 
preacher ought to wield, is that he can show that he 
has the Word of God behind him. Unless he can im- 
press that upon his hearers, he is no more to them 
than the political orator or the literary essayist. Unless 
he can make men feel that it is not so much with 
himself, as with God, that they have to do, the most 
superb mental endowments will not enable him to 
secure the great end for which his office has been in- 
stituted ; but if he has been successful in conveying 
that impression, he has proved his fitness for his work, 
even if he have no grace of oratory or charm of 
diction. " By manifestation of the truth to commend 
ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of 
God " — that is our work as ministers of the Gospel ; 
and if through the neglect of the exposition of the 
Word of God, or through the deceitful handling of 
that Word, we fail to use the power which is distinc- 
tively our own, we shall be like Samson shorn of his 
locks, and may, by and by, descend so low as to make 
sport for the Philistines of our generation. Hence, 
as the special engine of the preacher's influence, I 



164 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

advocate most earnestly the systematic exposition of 
the sacred Scriptures. 

A second advantage of this method is, that it se- 
cures variety in the ministrations of the preacher. 
Every man has his own peculiar idiosyncracies, and, 
yielding to these, he will be attracted more strongly 
and more frequently to some subjects than to others. 
Unless, therefore, the preacher pursue some regular 
course of exposition, he will be in danger of confining 
himself to a few favorite themes, and ringing the 
changes upon them, until his hearers become w r eary 
both of him and of them. But if he follow the 
course of some book, or trace out consecutively the 
chapters of some sacred biography, he will discover 
the same old truths, with ever fresh surroundings, and 
will secure that variety in unity, which is the charm 
of God's book of revelation as much as of His book 
of nature. 

It is the same Mont Blanc which the traveller sees 
from the bridge of Sallanches, from the summit of the 
Col-de-Balme, and from the sweet seclusion of the 
Valley of Chamouny. But each of these points of 
view brings new features into prominence, which have 
a special fascination of their own. So it is the same 
truth of justification that we look on in the Epistles 
to the Romans and Galatians, and in the general 
Epistle of James ; but in each we have some feature 
that we have not in the others ; and as we contem- 
plate that, we have an interest which the others failed 
to awaken in us. Some time ago, in visiting an 
English colliery, I was shown, in the office, a beauti- 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHI KG. 1 65 

ful scale of the different strata through which they 
had sunk the shaft some 300 fathoms deep. It was 
very interesting, and gave me a good idea enough of 
the geology of the place ; but when, a few days after, 
walking out with my friend, we came on a peculiar- 
looking, up-jutting rock, I learned something about 
the nature of the underlying treasures which the 
table in the counting-house had failed to teach. Now, 
that perfectly illustrates the difference between sys- 
tematic theology and Biblical exposition. In the 
former, you have everything arranged by the scale ; 
in the latter, you come upon truths in situ, and there 
is much of interest in the discovery, and of instruction 
in the surroundings. 

He who preaches merely on the general topic of 
regeneration, must treat it in a more or less stereo- 
typed fashion ; but let him, in the course of his exposi- 
tions, come upon such a passage as that in the begin- 
ning of Peter's first epistle : " Blessed be the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according 
to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto 
a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead ;" or such an one as that in the first 
chapter of the Epistle of James: " Of his own will 
begat he us by the word of truth, that we should 
be a kind of first fruits of his creatures," and he will, 
as a conscientious interpreter, be compelled to look 
at related topics in such a way as to give new interest 
to the great central subject. Is it impertinent in me, 
brethren, to suggest that the neglect of exposition 
may have something to do with the brief average 



1 66 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

duration of pastorates among us, concerning which so 
many regrets are expressed ? The merely topical 
preacher will very soon wear himself out, because he 
is drawing simply on his own resources all through. 
But the expositor has the Word of God before him, 
and his life-time will not exhaust that. As he follows 
the discourses of Jesus, or the reasonings of the Apos- 
tles, or the devotional meditations of the Psalmist, 
the infinite variety of these utterances will keep him 
from running into ruts of thought, or expression, or 
topic, and he will be like the well-instructed scribe of 
whom the Master speaks, " Bringing out of his treas- 
ure-house things new and old." I have heard a ven- 
erable minister tell that Dr. John Dick, the well- 
known professor of theology in Scotland, went, in the 
early days of his ministry, to a neighboring clergy- 
man in the deepest distress, saying to him, " What 
shall I do ? I have preached all I know to the peo- 
ple, and have nothing else to give them. I have gone 
through the catechism, and what have I more?" To 
which his friend replied, " The catechism ! Take the 
Bible, man. It will take you a long while to exhaust 
that." For variety and suggestiveness, for fullness 
and inexhaustibility, there is no book like the Bible. 
Make it, therefore, your constant theme, until the 
people call you as they did Luther, Doctor Biblicus, 
for that is the most worthy degree a minister can 
earn. 

A third advantage of this method is that in follow- 
ing it out the preacher will be compelled to treat 
many subjects from which otherwise he might have 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. j Qj . 

shrunk, but which ought to be dealt with by him, if 
he would not " shun to declare all the counsel of 
God." Every pastor knows that there are almost 
always some members of his congregation who speci- 
ally need to be enlightened on some points of duty, 
or of danger. But if he were to select a subject purely 
for them, his object would be defeated, because they 
would be apt to suspect him of deliberate intention 
to strike them, and would resent that which they felt 
to be a preaching at them, rather than to them. Now, 
in following a regular course of exposition, opportu- 
nities are continually furnished to us for the presenta- 
tion of timely truths, while no one can say that we 
have gone out of our way for the special purpose of 
reaching his conscience. 

Besides, there are whole classes of topics which 
would be completely ignored by us if we were to be 
guided only by our own tastes and feelings in the 
choice of subjects. One man would dwell exclusively 
on doctrinal matters to the neglect of the practical. 
Another, catching the modern infection, would sneer 
at doctrine, and present subjects without connecting 
them in any remotest manner with the cross of Christ. 
One would deal constantly with the love of God, as 
if there were no other text in the Bible than the 
glorious declaration that " God is love." Another 
would be forever dwelling on the justice o\ God's 
government, as if there were no fatherly heart in Him 
who rules the world. One would descant unweariedly 
on the sovereignty of God, and be forever preaching 
on the subjects of election and fore-ordination, forge t- 



1 68 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

ting the gracious invitations which are addressed to 
-all. Another, in his eagerness to press home these 
invitations, might ignore the agency of the Holy 
Ghost, and so do dishonor to the Comforter. And 
thus, in spite of themselves, perhaps, indeed, uncon- 
sciously to themselves, each would give a defective 
presentation of truth. 

Half-truths are always the most insidious forms of 
error, and it is to be feared that many of the half- 
truths which are so popular in these days, have had 
their origin in the neglect of a thorough and system- 
atic expository treatment of the Word of God as a 
whole. By following the plan which I am advocat- 
ing, however, we would, in course of time, go round 
the whole globe of revealed truth, and learn to preach 
each doctrine in its own proportion, or, as Paul has 
phrased it, " To prophesy according to the propor- 
tion of the faith." * 

So, again, we should be led to distribute our atten- 
tion fairly between the different books of the Bible 
itself. A venerable minister used to say that there 
were always sounding in his ears the cries of neglected 
texts of Scripture, saying to him, " Won't you show 
how important we are?" So, I often think, I hear 
the complaints of neglected books of the Word of 
God. You would be astonished at the result, if only 
for twelve months you were to keep a register of the 
texts that are preached from in any one of our sanc- 
tuaries. How limited is the area within which we 



* Romans xii. 6. 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. 1 69 

confine ourselves in the selection of subjects ! Some 
are constantly in the Old Testament ; others appear 
to think that the Jewish Scriptures are of no use to 
us. Many are passionate in their devotion to the 
psalms ; and some see no beauty in them that they 
should be desired. The Gospels are the special fav- 
orites of some, and the Epistles are too frequently 
ignored by all. Now it is not safe to neglect even 
those books of Scripture which seem to be the driest 
and least interesting. We should not forget that it 
was from the apparently uninviting pages of the book 
of Deuteronomy that our Lord Jesus drew those 
weapons with which He foiled the adversary in 
the wilderness ; and if we will only enter upon the 
work with a devout heart, and an earnest spirit, we 
may find the richest interest and the rarest profit, in 
some, at first — shall I say repulsive ? — portion of the 
Word of God. 

Thus, take the history of Nehemiah. Most people 
would be inclined to pass it by. They would extend 
to the book, as a whole, the criticism pronounced by 
a Scotch woman upon the tenth chapter of it under 
the following circumstances. Her husband was read- 
ing that portion of Scripture at family worship, and 
as, in the failing light of the Summer evening, he had 
'some difficulty in making out the proper names which 
it contained, he said, " Jenny, woman, bring a can- 
dle ! " " 'Deed, no ! " was the answer ; " the loss 
would be more than the profit, with that chapter, ony 
way!" But I can testify from personal experience. 
that one of the most interesting and profitable series 
8 



iy THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

of discourses which I have ever preached, was found- 
ed on that book. Sometimes the soil which is most 
rugged on the surface, covers the richest veins of ore ; 
and, not unfrequently, the most beautiful flowers are 
seen growing out of the crevices of the rock. Thus 
it is with many of the neglected books of the Bible, 
for if we will only dig beneath the surface of them we 
shall discover many mines of wealth, and by going 
through them all, we shall make ourselves " thorough- 
ly furnished unto all good works." 

Then it must not be forgotten that in expounding 
thus, we make our hearers sharers with us in our 
privileges. 

So, as a fourth advantage of this method, I name 
the fact that it will promote Biblical intelligence 
among our people. Those who have not investigated 
the matter will be surprised to find how limited an 
acquaintance many church-goers have with the sacred 
Scriptures. They may be acute in business, and well 
" up" in all matters of politics, while yet they have 
never carefully perused many portions of the Word 
of God. There are whole books of the Bible which 
to many worshipers in our pews are as much an un- 
explored territory as is the interior of the continent 
of Africa. Ask them to find the prophecy of Zepha- 
niah, and see what work they will make of their 
search ! They know the Gospels tolerably well, but 
they do not care very much for the Epistles ; they 
may have read many of the Psalms again and again, 
but they have little acquaintance with, or relish for, the 
historical or prophetical books of the Old Testament. 



EXPOSITORY PREACHING. 



171 



When, some eight or nine years ago, Mr. John Bright, 
with that happy talent for giving appropriate names 
by which he is distinguished, spoke of Mr. Robert 
Lowe and his friends, who rebelled against the Re- 
form Bill of the liberal leader, as having gone into a 
cave of Adullam, two country members of the British 
House of Commons were overheard conversing thus, 
as they were leaving the Chamber of Parliament : u I 
say, where did Bright get that illustration of his to- 
night about the cave ? " " Oh," was the reply, " I see 
what you're up to ; do you suppose I haven't read 
the 'Arabian Nights'?" And yet these men were 
tolerably fair senators, according as senators go. I 
am persuaded that most of us overrate the Biblical 
knowledge of our hearers, and that it would be of im- 
mense consequence to them, as well as to ourselves, 
if we should give ourselves to the consecutive exposi- 
tion of the Scriptures. Even if the Bible were noth- 
ing more than a valuable human production, its ear- 
nest study would tend to develop mental vigor and 
moral strength. But when we take its divine inspira- 
tion and beneficent purpose into consideration, it 
becomes infinitely more important that we should 
concentrate our attention more thoroughly upon it.. 
Men in the parlor, in the closet, and in the counting- 
room, are overlaying the Word of God beneath the 
mountain of new books that are forever issuing from 
the press ; therefore, in the pulpit, we ministers should 
more and more exalt it, and seek to increase at once 
the acquaintance of our hearers with it, and their 
reverence for it. Truth is the nutriment of the soul, 



172 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



and Bible-truth is the stamina of the spiritual life. It 
gives strength and stability to Christian character, and 
he who is familiar with it is not easily moved from 
the path of duty, or lightly " tossed" by every wind 
of doctrine. The great defection of the Ritualistic 
party in the Church of England w r as preceded by a 
depreciation of the pulpit. The preacher forgot that 
his mission was to instruct, and so substituted a few 
minutes of vapid sentiment for an earnest effort to 
expound the Scriptures. Biblical intelligence is ab- 
solutely essential to doctrinal steadfastness and Chris- 
tian stability. It is as true now as when the Psalmist 
wrote, that he who medidates in God's law day and 
night, shall be " like a tree planted by the rivers of 
water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his 
leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth 
shall prosper."'* 

As a final advantage of this method, I men- 
tion the fact, that in the process of preparing his 
expository discourses, the preacher will acquire a 
great store of materials which he can use for other 
purposes, and, in particular, will have constantly 
suggested to him fresh subjects for topical sermons. 
Max Miiller has entitled his essays, " Chips from a 
German Workshop," indicating that the materials of 
which they are composed were struck off in the elab- 
oration by him of his more systematic works ; and 
the readers of the " Greyson Letters" are conscious 
that they consist of the fragments that remained after 

* Psalm i. 3. 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. 



m 



the composition by its author of " The Eclipse of 
Faith." Now, much in the same way the Biblical 
expositor is obliged, week after week, to put aside a 
great many valuable and suggestive thoughts for 
which he can find no appropriate place in his regular 
lectures, but which he can use either in the illustra- 
tion of other discourses or in the construction of 
topical sermons. " Reading," as Lord Bacon says/ 
" maketh a full man ;" and the continuous study of 
the holy Scriptures, and of the works of others on 
them, cannot but fill the mind with ample stores from 
which the minister will be always drawing with ad- 
vantage both to himself and to his hearers. 

In the preparation of the ordinary sermon, he is 
working out of a treasury which he has already ac- 
quired ; in the study of his expositions, he is con- 
stantly laying up new stores. Every week he gathers 
far more than he can give in any one discourse ; but 
that which he is compelled, for the time, to reject, 
remains with him as a constant possession, and in due 
season is brought forth to enrich the minds of his 
people and influence their lives. 

In this way, too, he will be saved from that most 
horrible of all drudgeries, the " hunting for a text ;" 
for he will have always at hand a host of subjects 
which have been suggested to hini, and when he 
chooses one, he will take it, not from a sense of con- 
straint because he must preach upon something, but 
with a feeling of satisfaction, because he has some- 
thing which he must preach upon. For many years, 
in my own ministry, I have never known a time when 



174 THE MINISTRY 0F THE word. 

I had not in my mind a large number of subjects, 
each of which was, as it were, eager to receive my 
first attention, but which I was compelled to detain, 
that it might wait its turn ; and so the question has 
been, not What can I get to preach on ? but rather 
Which one of many topics has the most pressing 
claims and the most immediate interest ? Now, I 
trace the existence of this state of things to my con- 
stant habit of expository preaching on at least one 
part of every Lord's day. 

But an example will be to students and ministers 
worth far more than any mere general statement here, 
so perhaps I may be allowed to give one chapter from 
my recent experience. It is my duty to prepare 
notes to the " International Lessons" for one of our 
religious papers, and in the course for the three open- 
ing months of last year, I had occasion to go into the 
histories of Joshua and the Judges. These books are 
not generally accounted the most suggestive for 
homiletic purposes. Yet, after having done what I 
could to help the Sunday-school teachers, there re- 
mained on my own hands the following sheaf of valu- 
able texts, some of which I have already preached on, 
and others are waiting only for a favorable opportu- 
nity. From the lesson on the crossing of the Jordan 
I got the phrase, " Ye have not passed this way here- 
tofore," suggesting the topic how to meet unknown 
difficulties ; from that on the sin of Achan I got the 
evil influence of one man's sin on others, founded on 
the words, " That man perished not alone in his ini- 
quity " ; from that on the division of the land I got 



EXPOSITORY PREACHING. 



175 



the expostulation, " How long are ye slack to go to 
possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers 
hath given you?" which may be used either as en- 
forcing efforts after the attainment of personal holi- 
ness or as stirring up to home missionary zeal ; from 
that on the Promise broken I got the words, " They 
followed other gods of the gods of the people that 
were round about them," which may be employed as 
the starting-point of a discourse on conformity to the 
prevailing fashion of the world ; from the story of 
Gideon I got the phrase, " Faint, yet pursuing ;" and 
from the history of Samson I obtained the clause, 
" Samson wist not that the Lord had departed from 
him," which, taken in connection with the parallel 
statement regarding Moses, that " he wist not that 
the skin of his face did shine," suggested as a subject 
" the element of unconsciousness in character." Other 
expositors I know would have been drawn to other 
topics ; but no man whose business it is to preach, 
could go over these chapters earnestly and prayer- 
fully without having some fruitful themes suggested 
to him ; and thus, far from being inconsistent with top- 
ical preaching, the habit of exposition will give new in- 
terest to that also, and will enable the minister to 
present old truths with constant freshness and variety. 
Hence, apart from the advantages which the people 
derive from it, I could not afford to give up my habit 
of " lecturing," as we Scotchmen call it, because of its 
influence on my own mind and heart. 

But, in reply to all my arguments, it will be said. 



176 



THE MINISTR Y OF THE WORD. 



" Expository preaching is not popular. The people 
do not like it, and they will not stand it." Now, in 
answer to this, I have to say that the minister has to 
consult the benefit of his hearers as well as their 
tastes; and where the two conflict, he has to prefer 
that which will promote the former rather than that 
which will please the latter. If he is fully persuaded 
that they need such instruction as Biblical exposition 
regularly prosecuted can alone impart, then he ought 
f o give himself to it, even at the risk of creating some 
little dissatisfaction at first ; for he may rely upon it, 
that if he do his work faithfully and well, they will 
grow interested in spite of themselves, and will come 
at length to enjoy it. Of course, if he is ambitious 
of acquiring a reputation for " great sermons" and 
wishes to hear many complimentary expressions about 
the beauty and brilliancy of his " effort," then he 
will leave off exposition, and indeed, in that case, he 
had better leave off preaching altogether, for the pul- 
pit is not the place for such displays. But if he wish 
to honor God's truth, and if his desire be to hear his 
people tell him that they have never before so thor- 
oughly understood some portion of Scripture, or that 
his explanation of a passage has taken a stumbling- 
block out of their way or put a staff of strength into 
their hands, he will go on with his expository work, 
content ; oh, much more than content ! rejoicing in 
the fact that he has been in any smallest degree the 
instrument of building up the Christian character of 
the people of his charge. 

But why is this sort of preaching not popular ? Is 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. ! 77 

it not because those who have attempted it have 
done so too often without any adequate idea of its 
importance, and have gone on with it in the most 
slovenly and perfunctory fashion ? They have been 
content to "say away" on the passage, or, to use an 
expressive Scotch word, they have " perlikewed " 
awhile, going about it and about it, until everybody 
hearing them has been longing for the amen. They 
have taken to exposition because they thought it was 
an easier thing to do than to write sermons, and they 
have simply diluted the sayings of the sacred writer 
by the watery additions of their extempore, not to 
say ex-trumpery, utterances. They have had recourse 
to it with the feelings of him who said, " I like to 
take a whole chapter for a text, because when I am 
persecuted in one verse, I can flee to another." 

Now of course that is fatal. Such preaching does not 
deserve to be popular, and it is a proof of the good 
sense of our people that it is not popular. Let no 
man who wishes to succeed in exposition imagine 
that he can do so without great labor. No mere cur- 
sory perusal of the passage before he goes to the pul- 
pit will suffice. No hasty study of it will be enough. 
He needs to enter into the spirit of the writer, to re- 
call the times and circumstances in which he wrote, 
and to live and move and have his being for the week * 
in the argument or narrative, the prophecy or parable, 
the psalm or supplication, which he is considering, 1 1 e 
must follow the old canon of Bengel: "Apply thy 
whole self to the text, and apply the whole text to 
thyself." Thus will he discover the "hidden treas- 
8* 



178 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

ures" in the field of sacred Scripture, and when he 
speaks of them to his hearers, his words will have in 
them that unmistakable ring — that " accent of con- 
viction," as Mullois calls it — which will make every one 
feel that he is in living earnest. 

One thing, however, he must guard against. He 
must not turn the pulpit into the chair of the exe- 
getical professor, and spend a long time in hunting 
down some poor Greek particle, or digging up some 
obscure Hebrew root. Processes are for the study ; 
results are for the pulpit. Our people do not want 
to know what every German, English, or American 
commentator has thought. When one asks what time 
it is, it would be a mockery of his request if you 
should begin to tell him all the details of the mechan- 
ism of a watch, or if you should go into an exhaustive 
dissertation on the relative merits of Trinity church 
clock, or Bennet's, or the clock at the railway depot. 
You look at your own watch and tell him what its 
fingers point to, and that is all. 

So let it be here. Do not make your expository 
lecture a place of deposit for barrowfuls of other men's 
opinions, gathered from all quarters, but tell your 
hearers what you have concluded for yourselves, with 
the grounds on which your opinion rests, and then pass 
on and press the practical application of the principle 
which you have found in the passage to the consciences 
of your people and the circumstances of your times. 

That this kind of preaching will be both profitable 
and popular has been clearly proved, both from the 



EXPOSITOR Y PRE A CHING. j jg 

past history of the pulpit* and from the success of 
many living preachers. Let the young minister, 
therefore, take courage and labor on at it. Above 
all, let him remember here, as in all other things, 
his dependence on the Holy Spirit, and prayerfully 
seeking that in the closet, while he diligently does his 
best in the study let him go forward in the con- 
fidence that he will succeed, for God hath said, " Them 
that honor me, I will honor." 

Not all at once will the success come. But it will 
come as the result of these three things : prayer, per- 
severance, and patience. Keep on, therefore, with 
resolute courage, for " all things are possible to him 
that believeth." 



* For illustrations, I might point to Dr. John Dick's Lectures 
on the Acts of the Apostles ; Dr. John Brown's volumes on the 
Discourses and Sayings of the Lord ; the volumes by Dr. H?nna 
on The Life of Christ ; those of Trench and Arnot on the Para- 
bles ; the various works of Dr. Cox, now editor of the Expositor ; 
and for separate passages, "An Expositor's Note-Book," by the 
author last named. The volume of Robertson on the Corin- 
thians and those of Vaughan on the Philippians and the book of 
Revelation are exceedingly valuable, while in another style 
Peddie's Jonah and Raleigh's Jonah are admirable. 



LECTURE VIII. 

ON THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING. 



LECTURE VIII. 

ON THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING. 

IN its widest sense, illustration includes everything 
-*- which is employed for the purpose of making an 
argument intelligible, attractive, or convincing. In 
recent times, however, it has been virtually restricted 
to such rhetorical figures as the metaphor, the simile, 
the allegory, and the parable. When, therefore, I 
speak of the use of illustrations in preaching, it will 
be understood that I employ the term in its narrower 
and more modern application as equivalent to simili- 
tudes. 

Now, in the outset, it is important to say that illus- 
trations ought not to form the staple of a sermon. 
There must be something to be illustrated. In former 
days, preachers were exceedingly sparing in their use 
of comparisons ; but under the influence of the ex- 
ample of such men as Guthrie, Beecher, and others, a 
great reaction has set in, and the danger now is that 
discourses shall consist of illustrations, and nothing 
else. But the beauty of a simile lies in its pertinence 
to the point which you design to brighten by its light. 
Without that, it has no business in your discourse. 
When illustrations will help to make your argument 
more simple, they are to be used with discretion ; but 

(183) 



1 84 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

when they are employed purely for the sake of the 
stories of which they consist, and to hide the poverty 
of the thought, they are a snare to the preacher and 
an offence to the hearer. 

Much of the Sunday-school oratory of these days 
is vitiated by this false rhetoric, and there are many 
among us who would agree with the German lady* 
from whose diary Mr. Spurgeon has quoted the fol- 
lowing sentences : " There is a mission station here, 
and young men come down to preach to us. I do 
not wish to find fault with these young gentlemen, 
but they tell us a great many very pretty little stories, 
and I do not think there is much else in what they 
say. Also, I have heard some of their little stories 
before ; therefore, they do not so much interest me 
as they would do if they w^ould tell us some good 
doctrine out of the Scriptures." * Be sure that you 
have the good doctrine in full prominence, then let 
the light of your illustrations fall on that and you 
will be safe. * Repeatedly, however, have I heard in- 
cidents introduced into discourses which, though 
interesting enough in themselves, had no bearing, 
either immediate or remote, on the subject which the 
preacher was professing to discuss. They simply 
filled up time, and by diverting the attention from 
the topic which ought to have been uppermost, they 
did more harm than good. Remember, therefore, 
that as it is essential to a good style that one should 



* " Lectures to my Students," by C. H. Spurgeon. English 
Edition, p. 147. 



USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING. 185 

have something to say, and should say that well ; so 
it is no less essential to the proper use of illustration 
that one should have something to illustrate, and 
should use his simile in such a manner as to illustrate 
that well. We may paint a picture, but we must 
never do that for the sake of the picture. That must 
always be subordinated to the truth which the analogy 
is meant to illuminate. 

This principle was once emphasized to me in a 
very suggestive way. Spending a few days, some 
years ago, in the quiet little English town of Lutter- 
worth, where I was refreshing my spirit with the 
memories of Wycliffe, I went into the shop of a 
cabinet-maker, where I saw a magnificent book-case 
which had just been finished for one of the gentry of 
the neighborhood. I was at once attracted by it, and 
began to examine it minutely. Then I ventured 
rashly to criticize it, and even suggested something 
which I thought would be an improvement. But the 
intelligent workman said, " I could not do that, sir, for 
it would be contrary to one great rule in art." " What 
rule?" I asked. " This rule," replied he, " that we 
must never construct ornament, but only ornament 
construction." It was quaintly spoken, but it was to, 
me a word in season. I saw in a moment that this 
principle held as truly in the architecture of a sermon 
as in that of a cathedral — in the construction o( a 
discourse as in that of a book-case ; and often since, 
when I have caught myself making ornament for its 
own sake, I have destroyed what I had written, and 
I have done so simply from the recollection of that 



!86 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

artisan's reproof. There is a whole " philosophy of 
rhetoric " in his words. Whenever, therefore, you 
are tempted to let illustration become the principal 
thing, or to forget the great object of your discourse, 
in your effort to work in the drapery of some beauti- 
ful image, let this good rule come back upon you 
with its wholesome counsel. See that you have con- 
struction to ornament before you allow ornament to 
make its appearance. 

But, presuming that you have in your discourse a 
body of substantial thought, or that it consists mainly 
of a closely-linked argumentative chain, what is the 
use of illustration ? 

To this question several answers, all equally true 
and equally important, may be given. 

In the first place, it helps to make your thought 
clear. This, indeed, must be suggested by the very 
etymology of the term. An illustration must mean 
that which throws light in upon something else. It 
is to a thought, or an assertion, or an argument, what 
a window is to a room, letting the brilliancy of the 
sunlight in upon it, and making every portion of it 
luminous. It uses that which is known and acknowl- 
edged to be true in such a way as to lead the hearer's 
mind to the acceptance of something else of which 
he has heretofore been in doubt. It employs the 
imagination for the assistance of the judgment. Nay, 
frequently it brings the material to the aid of the 
spiritual, and by the clear analysis of the visible it 
helps the soul to see that which is invisible. For ex- 
ample, if one should have a difficulty in assenting to 






USE OF ILL US IRA TIONS IN PRE A CUING. 1 8 7 

the words of James, " For whosoever shall keep the 
whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty 
of all ; " * we might help him to its acceptance by a 
simple statement and illustration, thus : The principle 
that we are bound to obey God, by whom it was en- 
joined, is that which underlies the law as a whole ; 
hence, he who violates one precept of it does thereby 
abjure that authority by which they are all alike en- 
forced. Thus the commandments of the law are like 
a necklace of pearls from which one cannot be torn 
away without breaking the string on which all the 
others are threaded with it, and letting them fall 
ignominiously to the ground. In this way material 
things are used as a diagram for the demonstration 
of spiritual, and they who apprehend the point of the 
analogy have no longer any hesitation about the 
statement. 

But there is more than an illuminating power in a 
good illustration. It has a force of proof as well. 
As one has very well put it, " Wherever similes rest 
on the unity between God's world and man's nature, 
they are arguments as well as illustrations." f This 
was clearly seen and readily acknowledged, even by 
such a philosopher as Sir William Hamilton, who 
vindicated his liking for the illustrative preaching of 
Dr. Guthrie in these words, " He has the best of all 
logic; there is but one step between his premise and 



* James ii. 10. 

t Dr. John Ker's Reminiscences of Dr. Thomas Guthrie in 
Autobiography and Memoir of Guthrie. Vol II. p, 330. 



!88 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

his conclusion/' * Even our ordinary speech may in- 
struct us here, for there is an intimate connection 
between the " like " and the " likely." The similitude 
is in and of itself a ground of probability ; and in 
modern science many most important discoveries 
have been suggested by analogy. The poetic insight 
of the physical philosopher leads him to the percep- 
tion of hidden analogies through which he rises to 
the apprehension of new truth. And the same genius 
in the preacher leads him to see the correspondencies 
which God has made between the material and the 
spiritual departments of His universe, and to use these 
for the attainment of the great ends of his calling. 
The world of nature came from the hand of Him who 
made the soul of man ; and the administration of 
Providence is carried on by Him who gave to us the 
revelation of His will through the sacred Scriptures. 
We may expect, therefore, to find a principle of unity 
running through them all. Milton was giving utter- 
ance to a correct philosophy, as well as true poetry, 
when he said, 

" What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought." 

This is the principle that gives the Saviour's parables 
all their power. They are something more than 
felicitous illustrations. They are outward symbols 
of inward realities, and the laws that obtain in the 



* Dr. McCosh's Reminiscences of Guthrie. Autobiography 
ut sup. Vol. I., p. 322. 



USE OF I'LL USTRA TIONS IN PRE A CUING. 1 89 

one were felt by his hearers to be operative in the 
other. Whether He drew His analogies from human 
life or from external nature, He so employed them as 
to make them effective for demonstration as well as 
for elucidation. They proved as well as illumined 
the truth. As Trench has said, " Their power lay in 
the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and which 
all deeper minds have delighted to trace, between the 
natural and spiritual worlds, so that analogies from 
the first are felt to be something more than illustra- 
tions, happily, but yet arbitrarily, chosen. They are 
arguments, and may be alleged as witnesses : the 
world of nature being throughout a witness for the 
world of spirit proceeding from the same hand, grow- 
ing out of the same root, and being constituted for 
that very end." * 

We may not claim the same force of argument for 
every analogy which we discover ; but in so far as the 
analogy is true, the illustration which we employ has 
such an influence, and even when it may fall short of 
establishing a probability in favor of that which we 
are seeking to prove, it is invaluable, as Bishop Butler 
has clearly shown, in answering objections. Fre- 
quently a striking analogy will do more to convince 
the wavering, and to establish the weak in faith, than 
a whole volume of philosophic argument ; and so 



*" Notes on the Parables of our Lord." By Archbishop 
Trench, pp. 12, 13. The whole section from which these 
sentences are takenis pre-eminently worthy oi the young preach- 
er's study. 



I go THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

even as a means of persuasion, the study of the art 
of illustration is as important as is that of logic. 

But, leaving the rationale of illustration, I pass on 
to observe that the employment of similitudes is of 
great service in awakening and sustaining the interest 
of an audience. Here, again, etymology vindicates 
our position. Just as the " like " leads to the " likely," 
so it is that for which we have a " liking." Every one 
is delighted with a vivid and effective illustration. It 
is to a sermon what the picture is to the school-book 
of the little child. The lesson is made agreeable by 
means of the drawing. The thing may be over-done, 
indeed, and the art may be something of the clumsi- 
est, but still the little student will read to find out 
what the picture means. And in the same w r ay the 
hearer will listen to learn what you are going to make 
of your analogy. While you are dealing with the 
story, he is all attention, and it will be your own fault 
if, before his interest flags, you have not insinuated 
your lesson, or pointed your application. Look at 
the parables of the great Teacher, and you will dis- 
cover how, while yet in the absorption of their atten- 
tion, His auditors had left the gates into the citadel 
of " Mansoul " unguarded, He entered before they 
were aware, and made His application in such a way 
as thrilled them through. Often He made them 
judge themselves, and, sometimes, when they had 
pronounced sentence on the character and conduct 
which He had depicted, He turned upon them as 
Nathan did on David, saying to each of them, " Thou 
art the man." 



USE OF ILL USTRA TIONS IN PREACHING. 191 

This is an incidental advantage from the use of il- 
lustration which is often of great importance. Many 
of our hearers come to the place of assembly preju- 
diced against the truth, and by the wise employment 
of some beautiful or touching analogy, we may so dis- 
arm them for the moment, that before they have time 
to resume their antagonism, we may, by the help of 
God's Spirit, secure an entrance for the truth into 
their minds. They become interested in spite of 
themselves ; and when their attitude is most intense, 
then is our time to strike. If Nathan had gone to 
David with a direct denunciation of his iniquity, the 
monarch might have been tempted to drive him from 
his presence. But the parable fascinated him, and 
then the prophet could speak to him as strongly as 
he pleased. 

Moreover, the impressions which are thus produced 
are never forgotten. You may find difficulty in re- 
calling an intricate argument ; but you will be sure to 
remember that which was fastened to an illustration. 
Hence, if you wish your discourses to be memorable, 
you will seek to have them aptly illustrated. When 
Guthrie began his ministry at Arbirlot, he instituted 
a Bible-class, which met every Lord's day immediately 
after the service, and one part of its exercises was the 
going over, catechetically, of the discourse which he 
had just delivered. At first he was surprised to find 
that his pupils remembered so little. But, perceiving 
that they always easily recalled an illustration, and 
the truth which it was meant to illuminate, he was 
led to give special attention to that source of pulpit 



ig 2 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

efficiency, and so he began that course which culmi- 
nated in his after greatness. Now, we may profit 
much by this experience. We may not all become 
Guthries, indeed. It is not desirable, either, that we 
should. But we shall each become more admirably 
furnished for the glorious work to which we have con- 
secrated ourselves ; and our words w T ill be both 
winged and weighted ; flying far, yet fixing them- 
selves permanently where they fall. But we need not 
deal in amplification here ; the whole truth upon this 
matter has been condensed for us by one who was 
himself a master in the art, into these sentences, 
which at once explain and exemplify its advantages : 
" The chief and common object of a parable is by the 
story to w T in attention and maintain it ; to give plain- 
ness and point, and, therefore, power to the truth. 
By awakening and gratifying the imagination, the 
truth finds its way more readily to the heart and 
makes a deeper impression on the memory. The 
story, like a float, keeps it from sinking ; like a nail, 
fastens it in the mind ; like the feathers of an arrow 
makes it strike, and like the barb makes it stick." * 

But, you ask, how are we to get illustrations ? And 
in answer to that inquiry, I begin by saying that if 
I may speak from my own experience, there is no 
faculty which is more susceptible of development by 
culture than that of discovering analogies. When I 



* " The Parables, Read in the Light of the Present Day." By 
Thomas Guthrie, D.D., p. 9. 



USE OF ILLUSTRA TIONS IN PREACHING. 



193 



commenced my ministry, it was a rare thing with me 
to use an illustration. My style then was particularly 
argumentative, and my aim was to convince and 
satisfy the understanding, and then to make my ap- 
peal warmly to the heart. But shortly after my re- 
moval from my Scotch parsonage to Liverpool, Guth- 
rie's Gospel in Ezekiel was published, and this was 
followed a few months later by Mr. Beecher's Life 
Thoughts. These two books opened my eyes to see 
what was lying all around me. Under the inspiration 
which they communicated to me, I began to look for 
spiritual analogies in everything. The books I read ; 
the places I visited ; the incidents that passed under 
my observation ; the discoveries of science with which 
I became acquainted — all were scanned by me for the 
purpose of finding in them, if possible, something 
that might be used in pulpit illustration. And so it 
came that when I sat down to my desk, appropriate 
analogies would rise to my pen, and the difficulty was 
not how to get illustrations, but which to choose out 
of the many that offered themselves for my purpose. 
It might have been easy to have saved myself all this 
trouble, if I had been content to have appropriated 
ready-made the analogies employed by those eminent 
preachers to whom I have referred, or to have availed 
myself of those helps to laziness which have been 
published in the shape of Cyclopaedias of Religious 
Anecdotes and Illustrations. But not to speak oi~ the 
dishonesty of such a proceeding, there would have 
been nothing in all that to educate me into the dis- 
covery of similitudes for myself. So I used these 
9 



194 THE MIN IS TR Y OF THE WORD. 

books, rather as suggesting to me how I should go to 
work for myself, than as store-houses out of which I 
might help myself as occasion required. 

While, therefore, I recommend you to study very 
closely the illustrations of other men, let me urge you, 
also, to make your own for yourselves. Even if no 
one in your audience should know that your analogy 
is not original, there will be in your own soul, while 
you are giving it, a feeling of meanness which will 
prevent you from using it effectively ; so that when 
you do employ the illustration of another, it would 
be well always to acknowledge it. But it is a thousand 
times better for you to make your own. Look for 
them. I might paraphrase here the inscription on 
the monument of Sir Christopher Wren, " Si illustra- 
tiones quceris circnmspice." You will find them in 
the talk of the children of the household ; and some- 
times, also, as you watch the school-boys in the play- 
ground. You will find them on the street and in the 
store ; on the ship and in the railway car ; in the field 
of nature and on the page of literature ; in history, 
biography, science, art ; in a word, everywhere. 

Some one has said that " Learning to paint is 
learning to see ; " so I would say, " Learning to illus- 
trate is learning to see." The preacher who compels 
himself for a time to look at everything with the 
question in his mind, " What use can I make of this 
in commending the truth of God to my fellow-men?" 
will by and by discover that he has been prosecuting 
these researches unconsciously. It will become the 
habit of his life to carry them on. Every journey 



USE OF ILLUSTRA TIONS IN PREACHING. 



195 



that he takes he will bring home with him new 
treasures. Every visit that he pays to the work-shop 
of the mechanic, the studio of the artist, or the labora- 
tory of the man of science, will give him new spoils. 
Nay, after the faculty has been fairly cultivated, it 
will lay hold of his past accumulations and make them 
fertile in the freshest analogies. The stories he heard 
in his boyhood ; the scenes and circumstances of his 
youth ; the characters he met with in his native town, 
as w r ell as the old brown-backed books which long 
ago he read ere yet he had left his father's house ; all 
will be laid under tribute, and will be found rich in 
materials for this valuable purpose. 

As the poet, under Wordsworth's tuition, finds 
poetry everywhere, so the preacher, under the in- 
spiration of the Lord himself, will find illustrations 
anywhere. Dr. John Ker, in his pleasant reminis- 
cences of Guthrie at his Highland home in Vacation- 
time,* tells us that he saw in the landscape of Inch- 
grundle the originals of many of his most striking 
similes ; and many a harvest of the same sort has Mr. 
Beecher reaped from the fields of his Peekskill farm. 

Nay, He whom we all alike call Master and Lord, 
found all nature, and every phasis of human life, sug- 
gestive of spiritual truths. The hen with her brood 
under her wings and the sparrow chirping on the 
housetop; the lily in its snowy loveliness and the 
mustard tree in its growth from a tiny seed : the 



* " Guthrie's Autobiography and Memoir,'' ut sup.: Vol. II., 

PP- 348-360. 



jgC THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

housewife kneading her dough, or sweeping her room 
in eager search after the piece of money which she 
had lost ; the sower going forth to sow ; and the 
vine-dresser with his pruning-hook ; all were intro- 
duced into His discourses in such a way that each 
became thenceforth associated in the minds of His 
hearers with some aspect of divine truth. And this 
was one of the reasons why, with a Joseph and Nico- 
demus among His disciples, " the common people," 
also, " heard Him gladly." For here, in their liking 
for the illustrative, " the rich and the poor meet to- 
gether." And both alike will be drawn to the sanctu- 
ary by the magnetism of its simplicity. 

But it is necessary to give a few cautions as to the 
use of illustrations. And here, in the first place, let 
me say, that you should not attempt to illustrate 
that which is already perfectly plain. Do not hold 
up a lighted taper under pretence of making the sun 
visible. The great luminary can shine for himself; 
he does not require your puny rushlight to make his 
glory conspicuous. Few things are more ridiculous 
than to hear a would-be orator laboriously illustrating 
a truth which is almost axiomatic. When you have 
such a principle to lay down, state it with emphatic 
clearness, and pass on. I was once listening to a 
preacher who was descanting on the certainty of 
death after this fashion : " As sure as to-morrow's sun 
will rise, as sure as the tidal wave keeps its appointed 
time, and as sure as" — a great many other things, 
when a friend who was sitting beside me gave utter- 



USE OF ILL USTRA TIONS IN PRE A CUING. jgy 

ance to these words, which, for me, at least, blew the 
preacher's rhetoric into atoms, " Tut ! tut ! what does 
he mean? Do not the very boys on the street seal 
their bargains with the phrase, ' As sure's death ? ' 
Can't he say that and press forward ? " What is 
already clear can only be dimmed by the attempt to 
illustrate it. You cannot handle crystal without 
leaving on it the marks of your touch, and they mai k 
its transparency. Therefore, when you are dealing 
with anything which is perfectly plain in itself, leave 
it " simplex munditiis," for such truths " when un- 
adorned " are " adorned the most." 

Again, do not use too many illustrations for the 
same purpose. The effect of this prodigality will be 
to dazzle your hearers, and you will leave them be- 
wildered, when, perhaps, you think you have suc- 
ceeded in leading them to a clear apprehension of 
your point. In a display of fireworks, the last series 
of dissolving showers of variegated sparks puts all 
that went before it out of mind, and very soon it, too, 
will fade from the spectator's memory, leaving only a 
vague impression of something magnificent. So, in a 
string of illustrations, one will jostle another out of 
the hearer's mind, and he will go away with a wonder-, 
ful idea of the wealth of your resources, but with a 
very slight impression of the importance of the truth 
which you have been attempting to enforce. Re- 
member that everything you say is virtually thrown 
away by you if it do not bear on the elucidation or 
application of that subject to which your discourse is 
professedly devoted. You are not to empty out your 



igS THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

commonplace book before the eyes of your people 
that they may marvel at your industry in collecting 
so much, but you are to make the truth plain to 
them, even if they should never think of you. 

I once spent an evening with an enthusiastic micro- 
scopist, and I observed that always before he asked 
me to look through his instrument, he adjusted a 
focal mirror in such a way as to bring a bright point 
of light to bear upon the object on the glass, and 
then when I looked in I saw 7 the butterfly's wing, or 
whatever it might be, not only magnified, but il- 
lumined. Now, one illustration which, like that mir- 
ror, will focalize the light of analogy upon your theme, 
will be w r orth a score of second-rate similitudes which 
merely momentarily flicker before it. One lamp is 
worth a million fire-flies. 

Still, again, do not employ as illustrations things 
which are recondite and obscure, needing first to be 
explained themselves. The more simple and familiar 
your analogies are the better. You are to use that 
with which your people are already acquainted for 
the purpose of making clearer to them that which is 
obscure. Do not turn the sanctuary into a place for 
the teaching of botany, chemistry, electricity, 
astronomy, or some other science, in order that you 
may employ the facts of these departments to illus- 
trate some spiritual truth. Take the great outstand- 
ing things which are patent to all, and then the effect 
will be felt by all ; but if you follow the other plan, 
your discourses will drive away the unlettered with 
out proving attractive even to the votaries of science. 



USE OF ILLUSTRA TIONS IN PREACHING. 



I 99 



The editor of the Preacher s Lantern tells of a 
Scotchman who forsook the ministrations of the 
late James Hamilton for those of a preacher of quite 
another stamp, and who gave his reasons for the 
change in these words : " Eh, sir ! the doctor is jist a 
gran* man, but I got tired o' his natural history. A 
little while ago he took up wi' spiders. I never kent 
before that there was a science of spiders ; what he 
ca'd arachnology. Well, sir, for a number of Sundays 
he was always saying something about thae spiders. 
He was a gran' man, but I couldna get on with his 
natural history."* The author of " Life in Earn- 
est " had many other store-houses of illustration than 
that of science, and made full proof of his ministry in 
the scattering of similitudes of every sort all along 
his pathway, but such an incident, even in his career, 
may well serve as a caution to meaner men. 

You will misunderstand me, however, if you sup- 
pose that I would debar you from the employment 
of any analogy which scientific research may suggest. 
On the contrary, some of these are so simple in them- 
selves, and so striking when wisely applied, that you 
would be doing yourselves a great injustice if you 
were to refuse their aid. Only study variety in your 
employment of them. Do not go always to the same 
quarter in search of them. Gather them from every 
field. Be not so constantly referring to the ocean, 
that men will say that your occupation will be gone 
when " there shall be no more sea." 1 lave no specialty 



* "The Preacher's Lantern," Vol. II., p. 21, 



200 THE MINISTR Y OF THE WORD. 

in this department, but welcome analogy no matter 
from what quarter it may come to you. 

Do not be afraid even of one which may have a 
dash of humor in it. I would not choose it for the 
humor of it, but neither would I reject it on that 
account, if it were peculiarly pat. There are some, 
indeed, who think it is wrong to utter a word in the 
pulpit that might make a smile ripple over an au- 
dience. And, indeed, if the production of the smile 
were the only reason for saying it, I should be dis- 
posed to agree with them. But if, in spite of the 
smile, the illustration will rivet a truth in the mind 
of the hearer, then I should not hesitate to employ it. 
There is as little that is harmful in the laugh on such 
an occasion, as there is that is commendable in the 
tear which flows at the telling of a pathetic story. 
To try to provoke either, for its own sake, is always 
contemptible ; but to use both for the higher purpose 
of commending the truth to the conscience, is really 
praiseworthy. I think I can see a twinkle in Paul's 
eye, as he dictates a reference to the " profitableness " 
of Onesimus in his letter to Philemon ; and, provided 
we consecrate it to Christ, and keep it always in 
proper subordination, we may find a place even for 
humor in the sphere of illustration. 

Farther, when we use a fact in science, or an in- 
cident in history, or a story from common life, or a 
process in some ordinary occupation, we must be 
sure that we have got it accurately. I was one day 
trying to illustrate something to my Liverpool people, 
who were familiar with everything about shipping, 



USE OF ILL USTRA TIONS IN PRE A CUING. 2 I 

by the setting sail of a vessel. I used the word 
"shrouds" as if it had been synonymous with "sails" 
and when I saw the smile, half-compassionate, and 
half-contemptuous, with which my error was received 
by my hearers, I mentally resolved that I would 
never again venture on anything in the way of illus- 
tration with which I was not absolutely familiar. Th 
auditors must be acquainted with everything which 
we use for that purpose, that they may feel its force ; 
but we must be accurate in its statement, that we 
may retain their confidence, for if they see that we 
cannot be depended on in their department, they will 
place no reliance on us in our owri. 

Finally, we must be always careful to let the full 
force of the illustration go to illuminate the truth 
which we are expounding. We must not detain the 
attention of the people on the picture, but use it for 
the purpose of irradiating the subject which we have 
in hand. The foot-lights of the theatre are studiously 
veiled from the eyes of the spectators, but they throw 
a lustre on the actor's face. Like them, our illustra- 
tions must not draw attention to themselves, but cast 
all their brightness on the truth. Rivet your nail 
after you have driven it. Do not allow the applica- 
tion of your analogy to take care of itself, but see to 
it that it leaves the precise impression that you de- x 
signed it to produce. In your anxiety to do that, 
however, beware lest you run your illustration into 
the ground by drawing your simile out into the 
minutest details. A single phrase, sometimes even two 
or three words may do the work more effectively than 
9* 



202 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

it could be performed in a whole sentence or para- 
graph. In his famous inaugural address to the stu- 
dents of the Glasgow University, Brougham, following 
in the wake of Longinus, directs attention to the 
excellence of Demosthenes in this respect. He re- 
minds us that when that ancient orator " would com- 
pare the effects of the Theban treaty in dispelling 
dangers that compassed the state round about, to the 
swift passing away of a stormy cloud, he satisfied 
himself with the words coonep vspog — the just theme of 
admiration to succeeding ages ; and when he would 
paint the sudden approach of overwhelming peril to 
beset the state, he does it by a stroke, the picturesque 
effect of which has not, perhaps, been enough noted, 
likening it to a whirlwind, or a winter torrent, '(bonep 
cKTjTTTog fj xzwdppovg." The same authority contrasts 
these with the weakening amplifications with which 
Burke marred the effect of his fine description of 
those who suffered from Hyder's devastations, as 
" enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry." The tempta- 
tion, when one has a good illustration, is to overdo 
it ; and so to overlay that which we are seeking to 
make plain. 

That was the tendency of Dr. Guthrie, and in this 
regard, his friend, William Arnot, is a much safer 
model. That which Guthrie would have spread over 
an entire page, elaborating every particular with pre- 
Raphael-like minuteness, Arnot would have given in 
a sentence ; and, while the hearer of the former 
would have said, " What a beautiful illustration ! " 
that of the latter would have exclaimed, " How clear 
he made it all by that simple figure ! " 



USE OF ILL US TR A TIONS IN PREACHING, 



203 



In the light-house at Sandy Hook, by a beautiful 
combination of the catoptric and dioptric principles, 
a reflector behind, and a many-ringed lantern in front, 
things are arranged in such a manner that no ray 
from the lamps is lost, but all are bent out to the 
wide ocean, to bid the mariner welcome to our shores. 
So in using our illustrations we should contrive to bring 
every part of them to bear on the truth which is before 
us. We must not turn them on our own faces ; neither 
must we give our hearers the idea that they have been 
enjoying an intellectual or oratorical treat, rather than 
listening to a sermon. Jesus and His truth must be 
always in the midst, and not only in the midst, but 
conspicuously there, as the grand themes of our glory 
and our joy. Macaulay tells us in his brilliant article 
on Southey's " Bunyan," * that James the Second sat 
for his portrait to Varelst, the famous flower painter. 
When the performance was finished, his Majesty ap- 
peared in the midst of a bower of sun-flowers and 
tulips, which completely drew away attention from 
the central figure, so that all who looked at it took it 
for a flower piece. Let not the lesson be lost on us. 
It is as criminal to hide the Christ beneath gorgeous 
illustrations as it is to ignore Him altogether. He 
must be supreme. We may, and ought, to cover 
faces before Him; but we must never put a veil, no 
matter how exquisite may be its texture, over \\i> 
benignant countenance. 



* Macaulay's Critical and Historical Essays. People's edi- 
tion. Vol. I., p. 133. 



LECTURE IX. 

THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP — READING OF 
THE SCRIPTURES. 



LECTURE IX. 

THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP — READING OF 
THE SCRIPTURES. 

"TT may seem strange, at first sight, that in a course 
-*- of lectures on preaching any place should be 
found for remark on the devotional services of the 
sanctuary. But the two things are not generically 
different. It is alleged, indeed, by many that we 
who have no formal liturgy, exalt the sermon at the 
expense of the worship. But they who speak in such 
a fashion, forget that preaching and hearing from the 
Word of God, when they are engaged in by pastor 
and people out of love to Christ, and with a desire to 
honor Him, are as really worship as praise and prayer. 
Cornelius was as truly rendering homage to Jehovah, 
when he said'to Peter : " Now, therefore, are we all 
here present before God to hear all things that are 
commanded thee of God,"* as when he was on his 
knees in prayer. And if our modern church-goers 
were to reflect that still God prepares preacher and 
hearer for meeting each other, and by the providence 
of His Spirit gives the one a message for the other, 
there would be in them both a devouter sense of 

* Acts x. 33. 

(207) 



208 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

reverence toward God in the exercises of delivering 
and listening to a sermon. 

Not now, indeed, by " visions on the housetop," 
does God fit His servants for speaking to their fellow- 
men, but through the discipline .and suggestions of 
the week ; through family cares or pastoral experi- 
ences ; through public events or private conflicts, He 
leads them to such a choice of subjects and such a 
treatment of them, that they have a message specially 
adapted to at least some of their hearers. And in 
the same way He has been preparing the hearers for 
its reception ; the ploughshare has made the soil ready 
for the taking in of the seed. So every sermon that 
is prepared as in the sight of the Lord finds the Cor- 
nelius for whom it was designed ; and every Cornelius 
who comes into the sanctuary seeking to know what 
is commanded him of God, gets the message for which 
he was looking. And what is that, if it be not wor- 
ship? The preaching is regarded by both as an 
ordinance of God, and so the souls of both are seek- 
ing to serve God through it. 

But, to look at the matter in another light, every 
one must perceive that the sermon and the service 
act and react upon each other. The preacher who 
begins his discourse after a fervent prayer and an in- 
spiring hymn, is always more animated and earnest 
than he would have been if the devotional exercises 
had been languid and formal. And after an impress- 
ive sermon, even the most careless worshiper must 
have been moved by the hush of reverence with 
which the people join in prayer, and the enthusiasm 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, 2 Qg 

of soul and voice with which they sing the closing 
hymn. 

Besides, in our form of worship, the main respon- 
sibility for the service rests upon the preacher ; and so, 
it cannot be out of place to consider the subject here. 

It will not be expected, however, that I should 
enter into a disquisition upon the general question 
of worship, or seek to compare the advantages and 
disadvantages of the different forms which have beep 
adopted by different churches. I am not here to 
speak of the spectacular ritual of the Church of Rome, 
or of the liturgical service of the Protestant Epis- 
copalians ; neither am I required to insist upon the 
superiority of our own severely simple form. Each 
has its own elements of attractiveness ; and though, on 
what we consider Scriptural grounds, we may prefer 
our own, we may have something better to do than 
to anathematize the others. The essential things in 
all worship are that it be spiritual and true ; and if 
we condemn some for exalting certain accessories 
into indispensable elements of religious service, we 
must ourselves beware of insisting on the absence of 
these, as if that were absolutely needful to insure 
spirituality. Whenever any form or the exclusion of 
any form is made imperative, there is a danger of im- 
perilling the spirit. That which is worshiped, if it be 
not God, is an idol, whether it be made merely oi 
lead, or of the purest gold ; and if we make an idol 
of our plain Puritan service, it will be a snare to us, 
just as really as his processional pomp may be to the 
High-Church Episcopalian. 



2io THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

But the question with which I have now to deal is 
this, How shall we conduct that service which is 
generally adopted among us, so as to secure that it 
shall be most acceptable to God, and most refreshing 
and stimulating to us and to the congregation ? 

Now, here, it is pertinent to remind you that the 
first grand indispensable qualification for the leading 
of public devotion is a filial heart. The " true wor- 
shiper" is he that " worships the Father."* Sonship 
will attune the heart to spirituality. It is not with- 
out great significance, in this regard, that the prayer, 
so simple in its terms and so wide in its comprehen- 
siveness, which Jesus taught His disciples, should 
begin with these words, " Our Father." Thus, the 
Saviour would bid us pause a moment on the very 
threshold of our devotions, that we may set defi- 
nitely before our minds what God is to us, ere we 
go forward to present our petitions. Well has the 
good Leighton said here : " This is one great cause 
of our wandering, that we do not, at our entrance 
into prayer, compose ourselves to due thoughts of 
God and to set ourselves in His presence ; this would 
do much to ballast our minds, that they tumble not 
to and fro, as is their custom. "f Even if He stood in 
a less endearing relationship to us, it would still be 
proper for us, when we pray unto Him, to put clearly 
before our minds what He is to us and what we are 
to Him ; but since He has revealed Himself in Christ 



* John iv. 23. 

t The Works of Archbishop Leighton, Nelson's Edition, p. 452. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 2 II 

as " Our Father/' it is of the highest moment, if 
our supplications are to be either natural or sincere, 
that we realize all that such a declaration implies. 
If, for example, we lose consciousness of His Father- 
hood, and think of Him only as the Judge who shall 
render unto every man according to his works, we 
shall come to the throne of grace as if it were the 
throne of judgment, and fear and trembling will get 
hold upon us. If, again, we allow the thought that 
He is a King to take exclusive possession of our souls, 
our minds will be so occupied about the manner of 
our coming to Him that we shall be apt to forget the 
matter for which we come ; and our services may be 
a pompous ritual, like the ceremonials connected with 
the court of an earthly prince, but they will be like 
these also, in a large degree, mere empty forms. 

I am persuaded, therefore, that much of the life- 
lessness and artificialness of our public devotions is 
to be traced to the fact, that we have not received 
"the spirit of adoption.'' The spirit of adoption and 
the spirit of supplication is one. What liberty is that 
which a son enjoys ? How he comes bounding into 
our room, no matter how we may be engaged, calcu- 
lating that we will welcome him, and knowing that, 
when he has laid hold of our fatherhood, he has laid 
hold of our strength ! How little is there of the 
artificial or insincere in such an approach as he makes 
to us ! But it is not otherwise in our applications to 
God. It is easy to be sincere in offering all the peti- 
tions of the Lord's Prayer, when we have been able 
to appropriate the first two words and to call God 



212 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

" Our Father," and all unnatural and unreal formal- 
ism will disappear when we enter fully into the enjoy- 
ment " of the glorious liberty of the children of God." 

Then, as regards praise, the same thing holds good. 
What joy a daughter has in singing to her father ! 
There is no thought of weariness or of indifference, 
but every effort is put forth to please him. So, if we 
but recognize that God is our Father, and that He is 
listening to our songs, our hymns will be no longer 
vapid and uninteresting, but will become heart-stir- 
ring and ennobling, and we shall rival David when he 
says, " My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed ! 
I will sing and give praise. Awake, psaltery and 
harp, I myself will awake early !"* 

Here is the radical cure for dull devotion, power- 
less prayer, and uninteresting worship. We need no 
splendid liturgy or gorgeous ritual. We need only a 
fresh baptism with " the spirit of adoption ;" we need 
only the hearts of sons glowing with love for our God 
and Father in Christ Jesus, and then, filial happiness 
filling our souls, " hosannas " will no longer " lan- 
guish on our tongues," nor prayer come faltering 
feebly from our lips. The first song of " the morn- 
ing stars " was accompanied with the joyful shout- 
ing of " the sons of God ;" and when the worshipers 
in our modern sanctuaries shall realize their divine 
relationship, their praises will be but the undertone 
of the angelic harmonies. 

But, bearing in mind this important principle, let 



* Psalm lvii. 7, 8. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



213 



us proceed to take up each of the departments of 
the public service and see what is needed, in order to 
give to each its best expression and to get from each 
the fullest benefit. 

I begin with the reading of the Word of God. The 
day has gone, I trust forever, when the public read- 
ing of the Scriptures can be regarded as a work of 
supererogation, or as a device of a poorly-prepared 
preacher for filling out the time allotted for the serv- 
ices of the sanctuary. They tell in Scotland that 
when a worthy minister in Aberdeenshire w r as remon- 
strated with by a committee of his parishioners for 
making this exercise a prominent part of public wor- 
ship, he covered his censors with confusion by turn- 
ing to the title-page of the Bible, which, as you know, 
is printed in Great Britain by royal authority, and 
showing them these words, " By His Majesty's special 
command appointed to be read in churches ! " But 
we have " another King, one Jesus," and when we 
learn that " He went into the synagogue on the Sab- 
bath-day and stood up for to read,"* we have the 
highest possible warrant for bringing into the fore- 
most place in the exercises of the sanctuary the Word 
of the living God. It is true, indeed, that the Bible is 
widely diffused among the people, and that, happily, 
there is now no longer a " famine of hearing the 
words of the Lord,"f like that which, in the days o\ 
the Reformation in England, made the people throng 
around the learned clerk as he read out of the great 



* Luke iv. 16. t Am >s viii. 1 1. 



214 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

Bible that was chained to the pillar in the crypt of 
old St. Paul's. But still it is right that the book 
should be publicly read, not only that all may see 
that preacher and hearer make it the ultimate stand- 
ard of appeal, but also that the minds and hearts of 
the worshipers may be rightly affected as they draw 
near to God. Besides, one is more deeply moved by 
what he hears from the lips of another, than by what 
he reads in his closet. Few portions of the New 
Testament are more familiar than the eighth chapter 
of the Romans, and yet, if I may judge from my own 
experience, much as I always enjoy the perusal of that 
section of Scripture by myself, I have never heard 
it read by another without receiving a profounder im- 
pression of some part of the argument, or obtaining 
a fresh glimpse into the meaning of some of its verses. 
We ought not, therefore, to regard this part of the 
service as of subordinate importance, or to engage in 
it in a perfunctory manner. Let us feel that we are 
dealing with the Word of God, and that will produce 
within us such reverence and docility of spirit, that 
as we read, the people will be hushed into attentive- 
ness, and will listen, not as unto us, but as unto God. 
If we go into it as a mere form, or because it is a 
part of what are commonly, but very erroneously, 
called, the introductory services, we shall read auto- 
matically, having ourselves no intelligent apprehen- 
sion of the meaning of what we read, and giving no 
help or light to those who hear. But, if in our own 
sanctified imagination we place ourselves before the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hear 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



215 



Him speaking to ourselves, we shall succeed in inter- 
preting Him to the people, so that they will listen 
and obey. The first canon here, therefore, as in all 
else, is that you be yourselves really impressed with 
what you read. 

A few hints, however, may be added from one's 
own experience. Be sure, then, in the first place, 
that the passage which you select is adapted for pub- 
lic reading. " All Scripture is given by inspiration 
of God, and is profitable ;" but it is not all equally 
well -fitted for public perusal. Some two or three 
years ago, an intimate friend from the other side of 
the Atlantic, occupied my pulpit, and read the latter 
half of the third chapter of Luke's gospel, which 
consists of the genealogy of Joseph, the reputed 
father of Jesus, and as he went on with the ever- 
recurring phrase, " which was the son of," " which was 
the son of," " which was the son of," etc., I saw a 
broad grin spreading over the faces of the people, 
which indicated that he had made a great mistake. 
When he announced his text in the words, " Adam, 
which was the son of God," I could see why he had 
chosen to read such a passage ; but still the fact that 
his theme was taken from the last entry in the table, 
was no proper reason for reading the whole of it, and 
the amusement of his hearers at the strangeness of 
his selection, was a most unfortunate preparation, or 
rather it was an actual disturbance of their minds for 
the prayer which followed. 

Choose your passages for reading from your knowl- 
edge of the circumstances of your people, as well as 



2 i6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

out of regard to the topic which you are about to 
submit to their consideration. It is well, as far as 
possible, to give unity to the service ; yet that must 
not be sought at the sacrifice of any important inter- 
est. The didactic ought to yield to the devotional, 
rather than the devotional to the didactic ; and if 
you cannot find some portion of Scripture which 
shows the devotional bearing of the subject which 
you are going to treat, then make your selection on 
the general principle of securing that which will be 
most appropriate to the greatest number of your 
parishioners. Your pastoral visitation, of which I 
shall have more to say in another Lecture, will be of 
great assistance to you here ; for your knowledge of 
the characters and conditions of your people which 
you acquire thereby, will enable you to fix upon such 
portions of Scripture as will be truly helpful to them, 
and to present such petitions as will carry up with 
them the burdens of their hearts to God. That which 
you select with one case in view will commonly meet 
many others, and not seldom a hearer may take you 
by the hand and thank you for throwing a new light 
on his path, by directing his attention to a passage 
which he had never noted before, but which he now 
feels to be unspeakably precious to him. 

You will find a rich treasury of such sustaining 
sayings in the book of Psalms, and a precious store- 
house of them in the four gospels, while the expe- 
rience of the apostles, as unfolded in their epistles, 
can scarcely ever be inappropriate. But your own 
private devotional reading will be here your greatest 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



217 



helper, for what you have found to be profitable to 
your own soul, will always be serviceable to others, 
especially because in your reading of that there will 
be such emphasis of emotion unconsciously made, as 
shall infallibly arrest the attention of the hearer, and 
reveal to him the peculiar shade of thought which 
has so affected you. 

While, however, in the public reading of the Scrip- 
tures it is well to give particular prominence to the 
devotional portions of the Word of God, you must 
not overlook the practical or the doctrinal. Religion 
is a creed and a life as well as an emotion, and in 
order that it should be the last in any real and ra- 
tional sense, it must also be the former two. This is 
probably the reason why in the liturgy of the Episco- 
pal Church a place has been made for the recitation 
of the creed and for the reading of the ten command- 
ments, as well as for the use of the litany. Now we 
may act upon this same principle while yet we do not 
confine ourselves to the use of these forms. Thus at 
one time we may give prominence to the doctrine of 
the Incarnation, by using the first portion of the 
Gospel by John ; and at another we may set clearly 
forth the doctrine of the atonement, by reading the 
third chapter of the Romans. Similarly we may place 
distinctly before the minds of the hearers the work 
of the Holy Ghost in regeneration, by the selection 
of the third chapter of John's gospel ; or the blessed- 
ness of the forgiveness of sins by choosing the 32c! 
psalm. 

Again, we may find a place on one day for the read- 
10 



2 i8 THE MI XI S TRY OF THE WORD. 

ing of the law ; on another for the Sermon on the 
Mount ; on another, for some portion from the Epis- 
tle of James ; and on yet another, for one of the con- 
cluding chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. 

Thus, that which has been done for Episcopalians by 
the compilers of the Prayer-Book, in their observance 
of the festivals of the Christian year, we may and 
ought to do for ourselves. We should not leave our 
selection of passages to the mood of the moment, or 
the hap-hazard of the morning, but should endeavor 
to observe some system in accordance with which we 
shall be able to give its proper place to each of the 
various departments of " doctrine, reproof, correction, 
and instruction in righteousness. " For this purpose 
all parts of the sacred volume should be laid under 
tribute, and you will do well to pay especial attention 
to those unfrequented portions of it, in which will be 
found some of its most startling utterances, and some 
of its most beautiful and consoling sayings. At any 
rate, have some plan which you follow, so that at 
length your readings shall give a full-orbed presenta- 
tion of Christian truth. 

Then, as to the length of your selections, you must 
be guided by circumstances. The division into chap- 
ters, though very convenient for many purposes, is 
not always happily made, and may occasionally be 
disregarded. Sometimes it may be well to read more 
than one chapter, and sometimes a brief section may 
suffice. Only do not let it be too brief. Many pas- 
tors, as it seems to me, deal with the Scriptures 
homeopathically, and give them out in globules and 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



219 



triturations. They seem to be afraid to read more 
than a very few verses, and judging from their man- 
ner all through, you would infer that it was a weari- 
ness to read even so few. They are impatient to be 
at their sermon, or they know that they have a some- 
what longer discourse than usual, and the Bible read- 
ing must make way for their lucubrations. Now, 
that is all wrong. Read such a portion, as that all 
who hear you may understand that you regard God's 
Word as of prime importance. Why should we not 
occasionally take even so large a section as the entire 
Sermon on the Mount ? or a whole division of Paul's 
argument in the Epistle to the Romans ? Well read, 
I can conceive that such passages would have tremen- 
dous power, while the unity of design running through 
them, would certainly have an effect on the under- 
standing as well as on the hearts of the hearers. 

Give your whole attention to that which you are 
reading. Forget your sermon for the time. Dismiss, 
meanwhile, from your mind all thought about the 
prayer which you are about to offer. Let your whole 
soul be concentrated on the portion of God's Word 
which you have selected, else your reading will be 
lifeless and perfunctory. I have heard a distinguished 
clergyman say that frequently his mind was so pre- j 
occupied with the discourse which he was about to 
deliver, that his reading of the Scriptures was me- 
chanical, and when it was over he could not have told 
what the chapter was about. Now, it is impossible 
that any one should interest his people in the Word 
of God, if he reads it publicly in such a fashion as 



220 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

that. Remember that it is God's word you are deal- 
ing with, and that greater results may be expected 
from that than from any preaching of yours. The 
reading ought not to be subordinate to your sermon, 
but your sermon ought to be subordinate to it. In- 
deed, the end of your preaching will be secured, in a 
large measure, when you have stirred up the hearers 
to search the Scriptures, whether the things which 
you have spoken are confirmed by them or not ; but 
if, in your public treatment of the Word of God, you 
are listless and mechanical, you cannot hope to inter- 
est any one in the study of it. The eloquent McAll, 
of Manchester, England, is reported to have said : " If 
the Lord had appointed two officers in His Church, 
the one to preach the Gospel and the other to read 
the Scriptures, and had given me the choice of these, 
I should have chosen to be a reader of the inspired 
Word of God," and with such an opinion, we are not 
surprised to learn that he excelled in that exercise ; 
nay, it is not improbable that his deep reverence for 
the Bible so manifested, contributed largely to the 
power of his discourses. 

Endeavor to indicate the meaning of the passage 
by your mode of reading it. Good reading is good 
interpretation ; and delicate shades of significance 
which you have discovered for yourself in the study, 
may be revealed by your emphasis even without a 
word of explanation. Examples in illustration of 
this assertion will readily occur to you. Thus in the 
chapter on the resurrection of the dead, in the first 
Epistle to the Corinthians, most people read the 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 2 2I 

words, " For this corruptible must put on incorrup- 
tion," as if the word " must " were simply the auxiliary 
to the verb "put on ;" but in the original we find that 
the phrase literally means, " For it is necessary that 
this corruptible should put on incorruption," and so 
good reading will make the "must" emphatic; and 
when that is done, it is seen at once that the verse has 
an important part in the apostle's argument. 

Again, in the first verse of John's gospel, the full 
force of the words is lost in the reading which is com- 
mon, and which puts the emphasis on "was," but 
when we enter fully into the meaning of the Evangel- 
ist and lay the stress on the several predicates in- 
stead of on the copula, thus — " In the beginning was 
the word ; and the word was WITH GOD ; and the word 
was GOD ;" then the force of the verse as an assertion 
of the Deity of the Word is overwhelming. 

So in Paul's injunction to the Romans, " If it be 
possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with 
all men," the point is lost by emphasizing the "in," 
as is so commonly done, for that makes the second 
clause only a reduplication of the first ; but when we 
put the stress on "you," and read thus, " If it be post 
sible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all 
men," the hearer is at once reminded that though he 
is not responsible for the obstacles to peace existing 
in other people, he is accountable for all that are in 
himself, and he is exhorted to see to it, that if there 
shall be any divisions, the causes of them shall be in 
others and not in him. 

Again, how often is the sense of the Saviour's 



222 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

words about the salt weakened by a false emphasis ! 
Most people put the "it" into the shade, thus, "If 
the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be 
salted?" But when the "it" is made emphatic, the 
question is immediately suggested, " How shall the 
savorless salt be salted ?" and the fearful condition of 
a Christless Church is vividly set before the imagina- 
tion of the hearer. 

In the same way, by a delicate intonation, the pride 
and sullenness of the elder brother may be thus 
brought out, " Lo ! these many years do / serve thee, 
neither transgressed / at any time thy commandment, 
and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might 
make merry with my friends ; but as soon as this thy 
son was come, which hath devoured thy living with 
harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." And 
the sharpness of the arrow aimed by Jesus at the 
heart of the woman of Samaria will be felt when we 
read His words thus : " Thou hast well said, I have no 
husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and he 
whom thou now hast is not thy husband ;*■ in that 
saidst thou truly." 

These may seem to you very little things, but, as 
Michael Angelo once said, " they contribute to per- 
fection, and that is not a little thing." Besides, their 
apparent minuteness, coupled with the undoubted 
light which attention to them sheds upon the several 



* In the original the gov is found, and it is just possible the 
emphasis may be on " thy," indicating that the man was some 
one else's husband ; but as avSpa is throughout emphatic, I pre- 
fer the reading which I have given in the text. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 223 

passages, suggests the inference that great attention 
should be given to preparation for the public reading 
of the Scriptures. You ought to study the passage 
carefully beforehand, if possible, with the original at 
your side, and you should, by the help of every ex- 
egetical appliance at your command, make up your 
mind as to the meaning which it bears, so that you 
may indicate that perfectly to those who hear you. 
Do not delude yourself into the belief that it is an 
easy thing to read thus. In truth, there are few things 
so hard, and it has come to be much harder than 
otherwise it might have been, because preachers 
generally persist in thinking that it is easy. For my- 
self, I should be disposed to test a man's pulpit 
efficiency by his reading of the Scriptures, fully more 
than by any other of the public exercises, for it will 
reveal at once whether he is a reverent student of the 
Bible ; whether he is a careful exegete ; and whether 
he is a man of thoroughness, carrying his principle and 
preparation into everything. Because men usually 
make this matter of so little account, it is a case for 
the application of the Saviour's words, " He that is 
faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much ; 
and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in 
much." When I hear good reading of the Scriptures, 
I expect to find that the man is also attentive to all 
the details of the ministry, and I am rarely disap- 
pointed. 

Do not take it for granted, therefore, that you cm 
read well enough; or that you are competent to give 
effective utterance to any passage ad aperturam l\ 



224 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



Extempore preaching may do for some, but extem- 
pore reading is impossible for anybody. Of course it 
is easy to name the words correctly, but that is not 
reading. That is only accelerated spelling. Reading 
is the presentation through the voice of the thoughts 
which the sacred author has put into words : and for 
that, study is indispensable. You might as well ex- 
pect an actor to give a perfect presentation of a char- 
acter, on his first reading of a play, as imagine that 
a preacher can, without previous preparation, give a 
proper rendering of any passage in any author, how 
much less in a book so many-sided and suggestive as 
the Bible. Always prepare yourself for this exercise, 
therefore, and at length your reading of the Scriptures 
may be as effective in the conversion of sinners, and 
the edification of the people of God, as any sermon. 

But the question is often asked, Ought the reader 
to indulge in running comments? In answer, we have 
to say, that in such a matter, very much will depend 
upon the qualifications of the minister and on the 
character of his congregation. Many men have what 
one may call a happy knack of saying suggestive 
things, in course of their reading of the Scriptures, 
which amounts almost to genius. It is impossible to 
listen to the incidental remarks of Mr. Spurgeon or 
Dr. Cumming on the morning lesson, without both 
admiration and edification. But their eminence in this 
particular department has called into existence a host 
of imitators, whose success, to say the least, is not en- 
couraging to others. They aim at saying what is 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, 



225 



striking, and they end in uttering some pompous 
platitude, or some ridiculous absurdity. In their 
efforts to barb the arrow, they only blunt it ; and under 
the guise of explaining the meaning of the sacred 
writer, they succeed admirably in taking off the edge 
of his words. Unless, therefore, you have a peculiar 
aptitude for saying pithy, motto-like things, which con- 
dense a great deal into a very few words, you had bet- 
ter let the running commentary, as it is called, alone. 
Perhaps, however, you may be settled over a people 
who, from their habits or their education, are not able 
to command their attention for any length of time 
upon a single subject, and in such a case you may find 
it profitable to abridge the length of the sermon 
proper, and make a few telling remarks on the passage 
which you read. To do that well, you must make as 
careful preparation for it as for a more formal expo- 
sition ; studying attentively not only the original 
Scriptures, but also everything that the best expositors 
at your command have said upon the section. A 
good model for such work is furnished in Mr. Spur- 
geon's " Treasury of David/' which, over and above 
its value, from its references to the works of others, is 
beyond all price for the illustration which it gives of 
the best mode of turning the utterances of David to 
practical and devotional account. Peculiarly service- 
able, also, will be the commentary of Matthew 1 lenrv, 
especially in those places where he says "Note here M — 
for- after such an introduction you may look for some 
specimen of sanctified wit, or some nugget of heavenly 
wisdom. 



22 6 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

But in making such remarks, do not mix them 
up indiscriminately with the Word of God. Read 
the passage distinctly and intelligently, that it 
may stand clearly before the minds of the people 
in its own unapproachable sublimity ; but be- 
ware of interjecting your comments parenthetically in 
such a fashion that the hearer, unless he is already 
familiar with the chapter, may not at first be able to 
distinguish what is yours from what is in the book. 
Do not indulge in flippancies, which may destroy that 
sense of reverence which ought ever to be felt when 
you are handling the Word of God. And if you have 
no remark of explanation to offer, or no inference of 
a practical sort to draw, say nothing ; for comment 
is valuable only when it illustrates the obscure, or 
suggests that which might otherwise have been un- 
thought of. God's Word can speak for itself, and 
where it is perfectly clear, it will be more forcible 
without your remarks than with them. 

Throughout my ministry in Liverpool I followed 
the plan of accompanying my reading by an appendix 
of comment ; and in that way, in the course of sixteen 
years, beginning at Genesis I had gone over the books 
of the Old Testament as far as that of Ecclesiastes ; 
but though it was the means of increasing my own 
familiarity with the Scriptures, and was acknowledged 
to be both exceedingly interesting and instructive, 
especially to the young, yet as the years advanced, it 
grew less attractive to me, and when I began my 
labors in New York, I left out this feature of the serv- 
ice. It broke in upon the unity of the exercises as 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 2 2J 

a whole ; it amounted sometimes in itself almost to 
a minor sermon ; it tended to protract the morning 
services to an undue length, and so, when the oppor- 
tunity of a new pastorate was afforded me, I deter- 
mined to dispense with it altogether. 

So far as my experience goes, therefore, it is not 
decisive on either side. Here as in other things I 
would not fetter you with any Medo-Persic laws. Do 
not make a comment unless it is absolutely irrepres- 
sible. But when you have something that you feel 
you must say, say it, and go on. Encourage your 
people to have Bibles in their own hands that they 
may follow you as you proceed. That was perhaps 
the greatest advantage which resulted from my Liver- 
pool practice. The members of the congregation 
learned to make the Word of God a subject of study, 
and came prepared to note what might be said. We 
read in course, and so the morning lesson was in a 
great degree like the exercises of a large Bible-class, 
and proved interesting alike to old and young. 

But in America the Bible is a stranger in the pew. 
What the reason for that is, I cannot discover ; yet 
the effect is bad. It disposes the preacher to take 
short texts which his hearers may remember even with- 
out looking for them in the book. It discourages 
him from presenting a Biblical argument, or making 
any large induction of passages for the purpose of 
coming to a Scriptural conclusion ; and especially it 
puts a great obstacle in the way of expository preach- 
ing. I would favor anything which would remedy 
this great evil. The Pubic must be in //.v/v;c. 



228 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

to keep its place in the pulpit. Wherever you may 
be settled, make an early request that your people 
will bring with them their copies of the Word of 
God ; then see you to it, that they make good use of 
them when they do bring them. 

" To the law and to the testimony, if they speak 
not according to this word, it is because they have no 
light in them." " Seek ye out of the book of the 
Lord, and read." " Search the Scriptures." " Give 
attendance to reading." These are the commands of 
Him who gave the book, and everything which will 
stimulate to their obedience is to be welcomed and 
encouraged. 

In a Scottish congregation few sounds are more in- 
spiring to the preacher than the rustle of the leaves of 
hundreds of Bibles, as he bids his hearers turn with 
him to a passage which has an important bearing on 
his argument, and the corner pressed down, as he 
finishes his remarks, indicates that the owner of the 
book means to study it in the leisure of his closet. 
When you can get your people to use the Word of 
God in that way, both in the sanctuary and the home, 
as the testimony to regulate their faith and the law 
to rule their lives, your ministry will be a success. 
And, if you be wise, you will endeavor so to shape 
your public reading of it, that whether with com- 
ment, or without, it may, with your discourse, con- 
tribute to the formation and fostering of such a habit. 



LECTURE X. 

THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP — PRAISE AND 
PRAYER. 



LECTURE X. 

THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP — PRAISE AND 
PRAYER. 

^PHE subject of public praise is so environed with 
-*- controversies, that one cannot reach it without 
passing through them. But a few firm steps will 
carry us safely over all burning questions, and the 
more quickly we take them, we shall be the less in- 
jured by the flames. 

Some insist that we shall confine ourselves in this 
exercise to the use of inspired productions; yet, in 
the matter of prayer, which is the nearest of kin to 
praise, they have no objections to join with a brother 
who is employing extempore language ; w r hile in the 
metrical versions of the psalms which they sing, there 
is very frequently a marring of the original grandeur 
of the odes by the imperfections, and even errors of 
the rhymer. So, while repudiating merely human 
utterances, they are compelled to accept them after all. 

Others have conscientious objections to the em- 
ployment of instrumental music in the leading of 
" the service of song in the house of the Lord ; " but 
while we must ever respect a conviction which is 
maintained from the determination to be true to God, 
it does not seem to have struck [he friends who In -hi 
this view, that to be consistent, they ought to discard 

(231) 



232 



THE MIX1STRY OF THE WORD. 



the use of the music-book and of set tunes, as well as 
that of the organ. In the music-book the notes are 
in symbol, and address themselves to the eyes of the 
initiated ; by the organ the notes are produced in 
sound, and address themselves to the ears of all. 
Thus there is no difference in principle between the 
two, while, as appealing more powerfully to the 
people as a whole, and giving them a greater degree 
of assistance, the advantage is unquestionably on the 
side of the instrument. 

Moreover, in the employment of a precentor, the 
friends who have these conscientious scruples are 
hiring an organ. No doubt the man may be a good, 
godly Christian, but he is not engaged by the church 
because of that ; he is employed because he has an 
organ, and can play well upon it ; and if his organ 
gets out of repair — in other words, if he loses his voice 
— he is dispensed with, and another is employed in his 
stead. So the logical result of the argument is, that 
if it is wrong to use an organ, then neither set tunes 
nor a precentor should be tolerated, and each wor- 
shiper should be encouraged to " make a joyful 
noise " at his own sweet will. 

It is true, indeed, that the larynx is an instrument 
made by God, while the organ is a human contrivance ; 
but if it be wrong to employ the latter for the assist- 
ance of the former in singing a hymn, then it must be 
equally wrong to avail one's self of the human con- 
trivance of spectacles for the help of the divinely- 
constructed organ of the eye in reading it. So, if 
the question were one of argument alone, it is easy 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 233 

to reduce the whole of these objections to absurd- 
ities. 

Others still are decidedly opposed to the employ- 
ment of choirs who shall sing, at stated times, apart 
from the congregation. They say that singing is 
simply and only the expression of the soul's emotions 
unto God, and that it is never to be employed for the 
purpose of producing an impression on the heart of 
the worshiper. But, in the consciousness of every 
one who joins in the exercise of praise, there is un- 
deniably a very strong reflex effect produced, and if 
that be so, it can hardly be doubted that it was a part 
of the design of God in encouraging His people to 
offer praise, that such an effect should be produced. 
When Luther sung " Ein feste burg," he was inspirited 
thereby for conflict, and they are the noblest heroes in 
the battle of life, who enter on it, and maintain it to 
the music of a psalm. Now the reflex influence being 
proper enough in itself, may occasionally be made the 
direct object, and it is that which, in theory at least, 
churches seek to do through the agency of the choir. 

The singing of the Gospel, as in the case of Mr. 
Sankey, may be as much blessed to the saving of. 
men's souls as the preaching of it ; nay, as the saintly 
Herbert has said : 

" A verse may catch him who a sermon flies, 
And turn delight into a sacrifice." 

All that is needed is that the members oi~ the choir 
should be themselves in sympathy with the message 

which they sing, and that they should seek, as relig- 



234 



THE MINISTR Y OF THE WORD. 



iously as the minister in the pulpit, to forget them- 
selves, and give up all effort at display, in the absorb- 
ing desire to glorify Christ. Given a choir of that 
saintly sort, and the singing of its members will be a 
joy to the minister and a blessing to the church. 
But if the singers be musicians and nothing more — men 
and women who are anxious only to let it be heard 
how they can perform — then their presence will be an 
intrusion in the sanctuary, and their influence will 
damp all enthusiasm, and chill every ardent feeling, 
alike in the preacher and his people. 

In themselves all these matters are of little mo- 
ment. They become of importance only as they are 
pushed unduly into prominence. They are not worth 
a quarrel or a controversy. Therefore, when you set- 
tle as a pastor over any church, do not attempt rashly 
to alter any existing order of things in musical mat- 
ters. Accept the situation and make the very best 
of it for the glory of God and the edification of the 
people. "Art thou called" to a church without an 
organ, " care not for it ;" but if thou mayest obtain 
one, " use it rather." Only remember this, that noth- 
ing will more interfere with your usefulness or mar 
your happiness, than the stirring up of a musical con- 
troversy. Let well alone. The best all round is very 
often lost by attempting to have the absolute best in 
any one department. In the organ itself, if every 
note be separately tuned up to the scale, discord will 
be the effect when one attempts to play upon it, for, 
as it is an imperfect instrument, most of the fifths 
must be left somewhat flat and the few others made 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



235 



somewhat sharp, the octaves alone being put in per- 
fect unison. So, if we attempt to bring the music 
in the church up to that point of perfection which we 
think it ought to reach, we shall most likely put the 
whole church out of tune. We must make the best 
of things as a whole, and be content sometimes with 
a little less in one department in order that we may 
have harmony in all.* Peace in a church is essential 
to progress. The dew is not shed forth in storm, but 
in the gentle calm of the Summer's eve it distils on 
every blade of grass. So the Spirit comes not down 
amid controversy and debate, but where brethren are 
" dwelling together in unity," there " the Lord com- 
mandeth the blessing, even life for evermore." No or- 
gan that was ever built, no choir that ever sang, is for a 
moment to be preferred to those higher matters of 
spiritual life, for the fostering of which the Church 
of Christ exists. " The life is more than meat, and 
the body than raiment." The church is more 
than music, and it is the most arrant folly for either 
minister or music committee to imperil the welfare of 
souls for a mere question of taste. A church in re- 
gard to all such matters should be like Wordsworth's 



* Let me direct attention here to Mrs. Alfred Catty's very per- 
tinent little story, entitled " Imperfect Instruments." contained 
in the fourth series of her beautiful " Parables from Nature." I 
am indebted to it for the illustration taken from the organ in the 
text, but the story itself is one o\' the most wholesome and sug- 
gestive Lectures on Pastoral Theology which I have ever read. 



236 THE MINISTRY OF THE 1. ORD. 

cloud, "which moveth all together Vvhen it moves at 
all." So if you desire any change, wait till you can 
carry the great body of the people along with you, 
and meanwhile make the best of what you have. 

But now, as to the fostering of congrega: ional praise. 
Let me suppose that you are the pastor of a church, 
in which, as in the Broadway Tabernacle, the com- 
promise exists that the members of the choir sing by 
themselves a chant and an anthem, while at each service 
two hymns are sung by the congregation, Practically 
in such a case, you will have little to say in the selec- 
tion of the anthems, and yet, if you care to keep 
3 r ourself en rapport with the leader and the members 
of the choir, your influence will be felt, even when 
you do not seem to be exerting it. And you ought 
to care to keep yourself thus in sympathy with them. 
If you regard them as hirelings merely — that will 
lead to the manifestation by them of the hireling 
spirit. But if you have a frank and generous confer- 
ence with them on the subject of praise ; if you give 
them to understand that you look upon them as your 
fellow-laborers, and that you desire to have them al- 
ways in unison with you ; above all, if you indicate to 
them that you wish them to sing for the glory and 
in the service of Christ ; then, from my own experi- 
ence, I am warranted to say, that you may have the 
highest happiness in their co-operation, and, even, if 
some of them may have been unconverted when they 
came to you, the effect of your fellowship on them 
may be to lead them to the Lord. If we are to have 
choirs at all, then we shall degrade and demoralize 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



237 



them by speaking of them as " necessary evils," or 
by giving any countenance to the idea that they and 
the ministers are " natural enemies." Let it be your 
earnest endeavor to gain the confidence and secure 
the affection of the members of your choir, and when 
you have accomplished that, everything will be easy ; 
for then your advice will be sought with deference, 
and carried out with thoroughness, when in other cir- 
cumstances your request would be resisted as dicta- 
tion. Your power over the choir should be that of in- 
fluence, rather than authority ; for influence moves 
men and women to yield, while authority will dispose 
them to resist. A few drops of oil rightly applied, 
will stop the creaking of a wheel which might jangle 
the nerves of multitudes ; and other people's de- 
meanor toward you is the mirror in which your treat- 
ment of them is reflected back upon yourself. 

But now in regard to the choice of your hymns. 
Let your selection be restricted within manageable 
limits. I have a profound conviction that the great 
size of our hymn-books is helping to kill our congre- 
gational praise. No church is able as a whole multi- 
tude to sing equally well such a number of tunes as 
are needed for the rendering of the thirteen or fifteen 
hundred hymns of which our popular collections con- 
sist. The really good hymns in our language are not 
more than three hundred, and the first thing you will 
have to do, will be to make your own smaller hymn- 
book out of the larger ones now in existence. Mark 
the tunes that go well in the great congregation, and 
stick to them as closely as possible, 11 at any time 



238 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

you give out one that drags, or is left to be sung by 
the choir alone, put a beacon over it, and never give 
it out again. Thus in a comparatively short time, you 
will by a species of " natural selection " have made 
for yourself a hymn-book within the hymn-book ; 
and without saying a syllable on the subject, you 
will have developed a wonderful enthusiasm for con- 
gregational singing. 

Four years ago the singing at the Tabernacle was 
anything but congregational. Still I made no public 
remark upon it. I waited patiently for nine months, 
until a new hymn-book, by the vote of the church, was 
introduced. Then I proceeded on the principle which 
I have just described ; refusing the most appropriate 
hymn, if it were set to a tune which the people could 
not or would not sing, and contenting myself with 
one whose sentiment was less pertinent to my theme, 
if only the tune was such as evoked enthusiasm. The 
result has been, that the Tabernacle singing has been 
often remarked on by strangers for its heartiness and 
universality, while by the people themselves it is posi- 
tively delighted in. There is no need here of repeated 
exhortation. Nothing is to me more repulsive than 
the efforts of a minister to " whip up " the singing, by 
continually entreating the people to exert themselves, 
or by the impertinent interjection of similar inter- 
ludes of insistance between the stanzas. The thing 
is largely in the pastor's own hand, and in the manner 
which I have sketched he may without a word accom- 
plish all he desires. For the people love to sing ; and 
they will always sing when they can ; but when they 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



239 



are asked to join in tunes which have an intricate or 
disagreeable character, and have " no unison with the 
Creator's praise," they prefer to be silent. The less 
you speak about it the better, if you will only wisely 
provide for its general enjoyment. 

Two or three other matters here, minute though 
they be, require attention. Read the hymns distinct- 
ly and appreciatively as you give them out. That 
which is worth singing well is worth reading well. 
If you are careless or indifferent about the latter, the 
people will be so also about the former. Do not name 
the hymn and sit down, as if you were in haste to get 
through the entire service. In public worship nothing 
should seem to be huddled up. " He that believeth 
shall not make haste/' And if you believe that God 
is in the midst of the people, you will be reverentially 
calm. Many leap over the reading of the lesson and 
the announcing of the hymns as if they were riding 
a steeple-chase, and eager only to get as soon as possi- 
ble to the benediction. Take time, and by your read- 
ing prepare the minds of the people for turning the 
poetry into praise. 

Then rise with the people and sing with them your- 
self. Do not give them the idea that you regard the 
praise as only furnishing a breathing-time for you ; 
but give yourself up to the privilege of the moment, 
and let the hymn carry your heart also up with it to 
Him to whom it ascends. Let no sexton, or usher, or 
deacon, or any one else, presume to come up into the 
pulpit with any announcement, or to make any com- 
munication to you during the praise, any more than 



240 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



during the prayer. And if you have a brother with 
you in the pulpit, do not indulge in conversation 
with him while the people are singing. Example 
here is better than precept, and the sight of your in- 
terest in the song will lead those who might other- 
wise have been careless to join in with you. You are 
a worshiper as well as each of them, and no stronger 
obligation rests on them than on you to take part in 
the praise. 

Finally remember, that the best praise comes after 
a living sermon. 

A bishop visiting a new church, was asked by some 
one where he would advise that the stove should be 
put, and he is reported to have replied : " Tell your 
rector to put the stove in the pulpit/' So one of the 
chief factors in the production of congregational sing- 
ing is an enthusiastic preacher. 

There is nothing so overpowering to me in the 
public services of the Sabbath, as the singing of the 
last hymn. It gathers up into itself the whole inspi- 
ration of the occasion, and sends pastor and people 
forth with the highest and holiest aspirations. If that 
service of praise drags, you may generally conclude 
that you have failed in your sermon ; but if it rises 
into the fervor of a devout enthusiasm and stimulates 
every one to unite in its strain, that is the attestation 
that the hearers have been benefited, and the proph- 
ecy that they will begin to live out what you have 
been enforcing. 

But it is time that we should say something about 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



241 



public prayer. That is the most difficult as it is the 
most important part of the exercises of the sanctu- 
ary ; and in churches like ours, where no formal liturgy 
is used, it does not always receive the attention which 
it demands. Every earnest minister will tell you that 
the prayer gives the tone to the entire service. It is 
the key of the position. It holds in itself the success 
or the failure of the day. He who is fervent and be- 
lieving in his petitions, laying hold of God's strength, 
will be mighty also with men ; while the formal 
suppliant will be but a feeble preacher. 

But more even than the sermon the prayer requires 
preparation. It needs the culture of the heart. The 
devotion of the pulpit must have its roots back in the 
closet. The habit of the life will fill a reservoir from 
which the exercises of the sanctuary will be easily 
supplied. Great advantage will be derived from the 
perusal on the Lord's day morning of some portions 
of the psalms, or other devotional sections of the 
Word of God. That will attune the spirit into har- 
mony with the engagements of God's house, and put 
it into a devotional frame. Attention may be profit- 
ably given, also, to the prayers of Paul which are ever 
and anon welling up in his epistles ; while the closet 
writings of such uninspired authors as Augustine, 
A'Kempis, Leighton, Tholuck, and others may be 
studied with great profit. 

Combined with this preparation of the heart, there 
must be a deliberate consideration of the circum- 
stances and necessities of our fellow-worshipers. On 
the morning of the Sabbath throw yourself back on the 
11 



242 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



experiences of the week. You have been mingling 
with your people. You have seen the backsliding of 
some, and the conflict of others ; the anguish of the 
bereaved and the depression of the sick ; the sorrow 
of the heavy-laden and the weariness of those who have 
" forgotten their resting-place. " You know thus the 
secrets of many homes into which you have been wel- 
comed as an elder brother ; and so the stream of your 
devotion will flow through them all, and sweep away 
with it every care, and trial, and distress, carrying all 
on to the ocean of God's loving-kindness. Thus trust 
and peace, and a sense of the most delightful relief, 
will come into the hearts of those whose prayers you 
are leading, and as they raise their heads they will 
exclaim, " It is a good thing to draw near to God." 

Furthermore, we must have in ourselves an un- 
wavering conviction of the profit of prayer. " He that 
cometh unto God must believe that He is, and that He 
is the rewarder of them who diligently seek Him." 
The promises of God must be clearly before our 
minds. We must have a sense of security in building 
our expectations of an answer on the merits and medi- 
ation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And all through, we 
must stir ourselves up to take hold of God. 

Now, to attain all these things, we ought to have, 
immediately before the public services, a season of 
uninterrupted privacy. It is the habit, in many places, 
for deacons, or members of committee, or officials of 
one sort or another, to crowd into the vestry or study 
for the ten minutes preceding the commencement of 
the worship, and among them all the mind and the 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



243 



heart of the pastor are distracted by requests con- 
cerning notices or other matters equally trivial. This 
is a serious evil. It springs, for the most part, from 
the merest thoughtlessness, and a gentle hint lovingly 
given will commonly be enough to rectify it. But 
rectified it must be, if your prayers are to have that 
peacefulness which is born of trust and meditation. 
Hedge yourself in, therefore, as far as possible from all 
intrusion, before you enter the pulpit. Take time to 
look all around your people, to commune with your 
own heart, and to ponder what special things you 
have to carry with you to the mercy-seat. You will 
not go on an errand to a fellow man without pausing 
a little to consider what and how you are to speak to 
him. But how much more necessary does that pre- 
meditation become, when you are the spokesman of 
your people before the throne of God ? When Peter 
wanted to raise Tabitha, he put all the mourners out 
of the upper chamber, that he might gather himself 
up for the great prayer-effort that was before him. 
And in the same way we should clear our room of all 
intruders for some time before the service, that we 
may brace ourselves for the great spiritual exertion 
that we are so soon to make. For prayer is exertion. 
When it is real, it is no child's play. It calls even- 
faculty of the soul into strenuous operation. k4 It is the 
joint act of the will and the understanding, impelled 
by the affections;""* hence it is an exhausting labor ; 
and the more thoroughly we enter into it, the more 



* Canon Liddon's " Some Elements of Religion/ 1 pp. i; 1 ' J v 



244 THE MINISTRY 0F THE WORD, 

does it wear upon us. Even when he is making no 
physical effort that will account for such a result, you 
will see the beads of perspiration standing on the 
forehead of the earnest minister as he is engaged in 
prayer ; and he knows nothing, as yet, of the respon- 
sibilities of the preacher's office, who has not dis- 
covered that the most intense, as well as the most 
important, of his labors is that of public prayer. Keep 
yourself up for it, therefore, and let no petty details 
of parish work come in to steal away your attention 
and devour your strength. The last ten or fifteen 
minutes in the vestry should be sacredly and unre- 
servedly your own. 

So much has been said by others on the different 
parts of which public prayer is composed, that I 
shall not enter at all into the consideration of them, 
save to remark that, in my judgment, the true place 
for adoration is in the opening hymn. The ascrip- 
tion of honor and glory to God for what He is and 
for what He has done, is more fittingly sung than 
said. I would relegate all that, therefore, to the 
praise, and find expression for it in some prose chant 
from the psalms, or some sweet lyric like that of Sir 
Robert Grant.* But with that exception, I would 

* It begins with this stanza : 

11 O worship the King 

All glorious above ; 
O gratefully sing 

His power and His love ; 
Our shield and Defender, 

The ancient of days, 
Pavilioned in splendor 

And girded with praise." 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 245 

seek to find a place for all the parts into which prayer 
has been divided, and to give due attention to thanks- 
giving, confession, petition, and intercession. 

In the offering of these several constituent ele- 
ments of the one sacrifice of prayer, certain general 
rules ought to be carefully observed. 

In the first place, public prayer should be common, 
and not minutely individual. The preacher should 
not obtrude his own personal experiences and neces- 
sities, and ignore the great general wants of the con- 
gregation as a whole. His prayer should not be a 
pious soliloquy which he simply permits his people 
to overhear. Neither should it be a highly-wrought 
rhapsody in which the imagination of the speaker 
soars to such a height that the average worshiper 
cannot accompany him. He must lead the people to 
the throne of grace, and give utterance for them 
there to the desires which in them are yearning for 
expression. 

It is not easy always to strike the happy medium 
between a generality so vague as to be almost mean- 
ingless, and a minuteness so particular as to be all 
but unintelligible to the majority of our fellow-sup- 
pliants. But the great outstanding needs of a com- 
pany of men and women are easily recognizable by 
us, and these must not be overlooked in our eager- 
ness to get out of the beaten track and have origi- 
nality in prayer. How has the track come to be 
so beaten ? Simply because so many have been re- 
quired to take it, and so, if we leave it, it is possible that 
we may be left to walk alone. What is needed in your 



246 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

supplications, is not that you should ask things that 
nobody else had thought of, but that you should 
carry up on your words the cares and troubles, the 
burdens and anxieties that are lying heavy and un- 
spoken on your people's hearts, and leave them with 
God. Nor while you do that, need you be afraid that 
you are bringing the ordinance into contempt ; for 
when we are dealing with God, the simple rises into 
the sublime, and there is. nothing in all human litera- 
ture more elevating and ennobling in its character 
and influence than that exquisite litany, which in 
words of tenderness and unadorned beauty gives 
voice to the common wants of the great congrega- 
tion. Let it be your aim, therefore, so to shape your 
utterances that no one in the congregation may have 
the feeling that there has been nothing said to which 
he can add Amen. The most exquisite things that 
human tongue can articulate will be out of place in 
your prayers, if they meet nobody's necessity. The 
true eloquence of supplication is its appropriateness, 
and to have that it must be common. " O Lord," 
said a pious lady after a public prayer, in which the 
leader seemed to go round the world, but to forget 
the purpose for which the worshipers were assembled, 
" grant me all that person did not ask." Let us be 
warned by such a case against the danger of forget- 
ting that when in the pulpit we lead the prayers of 
others we must merge self in the community, and 
unite in asking those things which we all alike require. 
In the second place, the prayers of the sanctuary 
should be petitionary, and not merely meditative or 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



247 



hortatory. Meditation is not prayer, though it is 
essential as a preparation for it. Pious reflections, 
therefore, however much they may be valued by us 
in the closet, should be kept out of our public prayers. 
The place for them is in the sermon, which now and 
then may very profitably take the form of a devo- 
tional meditation. Prayer is a direct address to God 
and any reflex action of the soul as it muses on some 
phase of its own experience, or moralizes from it, is 
out of place in such an exercise. But if that be true 
of meditation, it is still more evidently so of exhorta- 
tion. Our public prayers ought not to be " oblique 
sermons," which are really addressed to the people, 
though nominally uttered to God. Our supplications 
should ascend perpendicularly ; we pervert them alto- 
gether when we endeavor to make them effective 
horizontally. I say not, indeed, that when prayer is 
sincerely offered in the pulpit, it will not have a bene- 
ficial influence on the heart of the worshiper, for the 
contrary is a matter of too common experience to be 
denied. But that is an incidental result, and so soon 
as the production of that becomes the principal aim 
of the minister his supplications cease to be prayers, 
and degenerate into very feeble and indirect dis- 
courses. Do not put a whole system of theology 
into your supplications. When a minister whom I 
knew in Scotland had, under the name of prayer, in- 
dulged for ten or fifteen minutes in a doctrinal disser- 
tation, making an old sermon serve in place of peti- 
tion, a venerable Christian matron was overheard to 
say as he concluded, " O if he had just asked the 



248 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Lord for something ! " That story, told to me in an 
early stage of my pastorate, made a deep impression 
on my heart, and there are few things now of which 
I am more intolerant than a lesson in theology given 
in the guise of a prayer. 

Be on your guard, also, against insinuating into 
your prayers the reproof of some irregularity or im- 
morality of which some one of your hearers has been 
guilty. That is cowardice and irreverence, but it is 
not prayer. Remember that when you engage in the 
exercise of prayer in the pulpit, you are there not to 
ventilate your personal aversions, or to give indirect 
expression to your individual grudges and grievances, 
but to be the mouth-piece of the desires of the peo- 
ple unto God. Keep your admonitions for private 
dealing with the offender, and let your doctrinal in- 
structions go into your sermons. The essence of 
prayer is asking. The thanksgiving is the acknowl- 
edgment of answers already received, and the confes- 
sion is the preparation for the presenting of new peti- 
tions ; but the unloading of the heart in earnest, be- 
lieving supplication, is the great thing that you should 
seek to accomplish for yourself and for your people 
in your public approaches to the throne of grace. 
" Ask and ye shall receive/' " Ye have not because 
ye ask not." Let us only remember these and kin- 
dred passages when we rise to lead our people's 
prayers, and then our aspirations will shape them- 
selves into prayers which will be prayers indeed. 

But, passing to another particular, I remark that 
our public petitions should be real, and not artificial. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



249 



We should ask what we and the people truly desire, 
rather than what we think we ought to desire. 
There is too much of what might be called manner- 
ism in the prayers of the sanctuary. Certain expres- 
sions have come down to us by tradition from the 
elders, and it has become the fashion to use them, 
until at length both for him who utters them and the 
people whom he is leading all meaning has dropped 
out of them. Nay, sometimes a similar effect has 
been produced through the formal and habitual 
adoption even of the language of the Word of God. 
I trust that I shall not be misunderstood here. The 
Bible is the great directory in prayer, and there is no 
liturgy like that of the Book of Psalms. Still, even 
when we employ its words, we must see to it that we 
use them intelligently and sincerely, and must not 
fall into the snare of letting the form become a form- 
alism. We can be whole-souled only in that which 
is real to us, and to have reality in our petitions, they 
must be natural and our own. Hence, it is better to 
use Scriptural quotation only when we can pour our 
hearts warm and living into its inspired mould ; and 
wherever the language of the Bible is figurative or 
obscure, we should prefer to put our thought into the 
plainest words which we can select for ourselves. 
The late Dr. James Hamilton has given, in one of 
his review articles, an interesting illustration, which 
will make my meaning plain in this connection. He 
uses it in regard to hymns, but its primary application 
is to prayer. I quote his words. \\c says : " 1 can- 
not tell it accurately, but I have heard o( a godly 



250 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

couple whose child was sick and at the point of death. 
It was unusual to pray together, except at the hour 
of ' exercise ' ; however, in her distress, the mother 
prevailed on her husband to kneel down at the bed- 
side and ' offer a word of prayer.' The good man's 
prayers were chiefly taken from that best of litur- 
gies, the Book of Psalms ; and after a long and rever- 
ential introduction from the 90th psalm and else- 
where, he proceeded : ' Lord, turn again the captivity 
of Zion ; then shall our mouth be filled with laughter 
and our tongue with singing ' ; and as he was proceed- 
ing in that strain, the poor, agonized mother inter- 
rupted him, saying : ' Eh ! man, you're aye drawn 
out for thae Jews, but it's our bairn that's deem',' at 
the same time clasping her hands and crying, ' Lord, 
help us ! oh, give us back our darling, if it be Thy 
holy will ; and if he is to be taken, oh, take him to 
Thyself.' "* Now, every one must see how the reality 
of that woman's distress brushed away all mannerism 
from her prayer, and she told the Lord just what she 
wanted. 

But the same thing holds in public petitions. We 
have too largely overlaid our devotions, alike in the 
sanctuary and the closet, with artificialisms which are 
none the less injurious because they consist in the 
formal repetition of words taken from the Scriptures 
of truth. We attempt to soar aloft into spiritual 
regions on the borrowed wings of David and his 
brother psalmists, though at the moment we have no 



* British and Foreign Evangelical Review for 1865, p. 340. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, 



251 



community of feeling with them, and the troubles of 
our every-day experience are permitted to lie un- 
spoken on our own and our peopled hearts. We 
smile as the lawyer talks of his precedents, and we 
are apt to say to him : " What of these ? Give us 
justice, and if you have not a precedent, make one 
for the occasion." We complain of the architect who, 
forgetting that we are living in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, will insist on building churches for us in the 
beautiful, yet cold, inconvenient, and dimly-lighted 
Gothic of the past, and we say to him : " These were 
all well for former days, but give us something suited 
to our present requirements/' But we are often our- 
selves guilty of similar anachronisms in our prayers, 
and keep using forms of expression, some Scriptural 
and some traditional, which have no special appropri- 
ateness to men's circumstances now, until we provoke 
our people to say, as that agonized mother did, 
" Use common words that will describe our real 
needs." 

Again, our public prayers should be definite and 
direct. If we were going on a deputation to the head 
of some department in the State, and w T ere appointed 
to represent our companions by making a statement 
of the case which we had come to plead, we would 
immediately set ourselves to discover how most 
pointedly, briefly, and comprehensively we could 
make our wishes known to the official. All circum- 
locution would be avoided ; we would not ask for 
anything which we did not want, and we would put 
clearly and distinctly forward those things which we 



252 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

desired. Now, if we had a right idea of our duty as 
leaders of public prayer, we would pursue a similar 
plan with our petitions in the sanctuary. Chalmers 
said of some one's prayers, that they were " business- 
like," and he could not have given them higher com- 
mendation. When Bartimeus called so loudly and 
importunately on the Lord to have mercy on him, and 
Christ commanded that he should be brought unto 
Him, he was met with the question, " What wilt thou 
that I should do unto thee ? " But he was at no loss 
for a reply. He did not begin a thousand miles away 
from the subject that was distressing him, and ask for 
a great many things for which he did not care, but he 
went to the point at once, and said : " Lord, that I may 
receive my sight." So again, when Salome came with 
her sons, worshiping Him and desiring a certain thing 
of Him, He said unto her, " What wilt thou ? " And 
in her reply, though she did not know all that was 
implied in her prayer, she went straight to that which 
she desired. Now, we may profitably follow such 
examples ; and if, ever as we rise to lead our fellow- 
worshipers in prayer, we could hear the voice of the 
Master saying unto us, " What will ye that I should 
do for you ? " our petitions would have as much of 
definiteness and directness as there is in the flight of 
an arrow to its mark. 

A revival of spiritual life and earnestness in our 
own souls will richly contribute to the production of 
this directness. Earnestness always takes the short- 
est road. " Before our conversion," said some fervent 
ones, after a revival, " we used to pray in circles, but 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



253 



now we pray in straight lines." I think we might 
learn much in this respect also from the study of the 
prayers recorded in the Bible. Take for example that 
of Abraham's servant when he went for Rebekah, or 
that of Jacob when he was afraid of meeting Esau, or 
that of Elijah on Mount Carmel, or that of Peter 
and the Apostles after the first imprisonment for 
Jesus' sake, and you will be struck with the simple, 
honest straightforwardness of the requests they made. 
These men had an object in view, and they went 
right onward to that. So let it be with us. Let us 
gather up the wants of the people as far as they are 
known to us, and express them simply and truthfully 
to God, and then let us conclude, and the advantage 
both in point and brevity will be unspeakable. 

Finally, our public prayers should be in some parts 
intercessory, and not merely selfish. When Christ 
comes into the heart, He widens it and gives it in- 
terest in, and sympathy with, others. Now, these 
emotions find their natural outlet at the throne of 
grace. What a beautiful illustration of this we have 
in the case of the apostle Paul ! As in the central 
office of a great telegraphic company there are wires 
in communication with all parts of the country and 
all quarters of the globe, so from the closet of the 
apostle there went out messages of greeting and 
benediction, each one going round by the throne of 
God, to the Christian brethren in all the cities in 
which he had been permitted to labor. He was a 
Christian, and was affected by everything that had 
any slightest influence on the cause of Christ. There- 



254 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



fore, he prayed not only for his brethren in the Lord, 
but for all men in authority in the state. And in our 
pulpits we ought to imitate his example. The aged, 
the sick, the sorrowful, should be remembered by us 
with tenderness, while those who are laboring in the 
Sunday-school and mission district should be l com- 
mended to the grace of Him in whom they believe/' 
The land we live in should be patriotically borne upon 
our hearts in public prayer, and our judges, legislators, 
and magistrates ought never to be forgotten. A 
place should also frequently be found for the mission- 
ary enterprise both at home and abroad, and for the 
work in which our Tract and Bible societies are so 
nobly engaged. It will not be wise, indeed, to seek 
to include all these in every prayer, but by a little 
system on your part, you may be able so to vary the 
objects for which you pray on different occasions as 
to secure brevity and variety at all times. Only re- 
member that the heart must be in each utterance ; 
for in public prayer, though it is not essential to say 
all you feel (for that, the closet is the place), yet it is 
indispensable that you feel all you say. 

I have not thought it well to say a word on com- 
mon faults in prayer, partly because these are very 
faithfully pointed out in various works that are of 
easy access to you,* and partly because I could not 



* See, especially, the lectures of the late Dr. Porter, of An- 
dover ; the lecture on Public Prayer in Mr. Spurgeon's " Lectures 
to my Students ;" and the extremely valuable book on Public 
Worship, by J. Spencer Pearsall, London. 



THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 2 $$ 

expose them without seeming to turn very sacred 
subjects into ridicule. I leave you here, therefore, to 
the guidance of sanctified common sense and the 
teachings of the Holy Spirit ; and if any one of you 
should be overwhelmed with a sense of his own un- 
fitness to lead the devotions of others, let him take 
comfort in the thought that they who have such feel- 
ings are most commonly those who excel in this ex- 
ercise. The poet Cowper shrunk almost from the 
sound of his own voice, and yet when he led in that 
little prayer -meeting which was held in the great 
house of Olney, it is the testimony of those who 
heard him, that no one ever prayed like him. He 
who knows that he has a gift in this direction, has in 
reality no excellence in it, for the consciousness of it 
mars its glory. He who is eager to lay hold of God, 
and seeks to rise to ever closer communion with Him, 
mourning all the while that he is so far from his ideal, 
is likely to be nearer to it than he wots of. He sees 
not the shining of his own face, but the people feel 
that he is ' talking ' with God. Take comfort, then, for 
fluency is not always fervor; and always in prayer 
there is more real power in the hesitancy of a bur- 
dened heart than in the easy utterance of stock 
phrases. If the heart be in the prayer, other things 
will right themselves by degrees. But nothing will 
compensate for the absence of that. 



LECTURE XI. 

THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 



LECTURE XI. 

THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 

npHE pastorate and the pulpit act and react upon 
-*- each other. The experiences of the people 
gathered by the minister in his intercourse among 
them, serve to enrich his discourses ; and the charac- 
ter and conduct of the pastor during the week will 
either deepen or efface the impressions made by his 
sermon on the Sabbath. The discourse is itself in 
some measure a feeding or shepherding of the flock ; 
and the life is always a sermon, for there is no elo- 
quence so potent as that of character, and no in- 
fluence so subtle as that of example. The sermon 
of the Lord's day gives the minister an introduction 
into the homes of his people on other days, and his 
behavior before them on such occasions will go far 
either to neutralize or to enforce his public teachings. 
The deportment of the pastor will be to his dis- 
courses, either like the extinguisher, which puts out 
the light, or like the reflector, which intensifies its 
lustre. 

It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that you 
should be thoroughly alive to the bearing of your 
pastoral demeanor on your pulpit efficiency. There 
are some men of whom you would say, as you listen 

(25Q) 



260 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

to their sermons, that they should be always in the 
pulpit ; but when you meet them in private, you are 
constrained to declare, as you listen to their conver- 
sation, that they should never be in the pulpit. Let 
it not be so with you. Do nothing in your life to 
wipe out the impressions made by your sermons, but 
seek that it may be said of you, as Chaucer said of 
his " goode parson," 

"The lore of Christ and his apostles twelve 
He taught, but first he followed it himselve." 

I would not have you, indeed, to put on any artifi- 
cial piety, or to cultivate any mere appearance of 
sanctity. Neither would I desire you to mistake 
starch for dignity, or moroseness for piety. I have 
no sympathy with those who seem to think that 
clergymen are bound by a stricter moral law than 
other men, and that what is perfectly justifiable in a 
layman (so-called), is unwarrantable in a minister. 
We cannot admit that the preacher is to be like a 
monk, going about with sober step and look demure, 
never seen to laugh, or if he do make the attempt, 
that he should only " grin horribly a ghastly smile," 
and look more melancholy in his mirth than an ordi- 
nary mortal would in tears. We grant that he may 
have some reasons which other men have not, for 
seeking to walk worthy of the Gospel of Christ ; but 
every professing Christian should be walking in the 
same way with him. We grant, also, that he should 
set an example in every good work ; but that which 
he sets, if it be really good, it is the duty of his peo- 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 2 6l 

pie to follow ; and the notion that he ought to be more 
sedate, subdued, and holy than another Christian 
should be, is but a fragment of the teaching of that 
Church which insists upon the celibacy of the clergy, 
and regards the conventual life as specially " relig- 
ious." There are not two standards of Christian 
morality. The pattern is one and the same for all 
believers ; and it is the duty of all alike to get as near 
as possible to " the measure of the stature of the full- 
ness of Christ." 

We ask, therefore, for no professional piety, or 
official decorum. We desire only that you should 
cultivate a sense of the presence of Christ with you 
in all your goings out and comings in among your 
people, and then everything will come right of itself. 
Do nothing, and say nothing of which you would be 
ashamed, if He were visibly by your side ; and as 
when men look at the spectrum through a telescope, 
they see the mystic presence of other lines than 
those made by the prismatic colors, so your people, 
as they scan your deportment, will see in you the 
evident tokens that there is more about you than 
merely earthly agencies can account for, even the 
spirit of the Lord himself. 

But mere general exhortation will be comparatively 
useless to you in this department, and so I will come 
at once to particulars. 

And first, in reference to parish matters, or things 
pertaining to the management of congregational 
affairs, let me advise you not to attempt to do too 
much at the outset of your ministry. Your earliest 



2 62 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

impulse, as soon as you discover how matters are, 
will be to set everything right in a moment ; and as 
the young housemaid, in her attempts to clean a 
room, generally ends by making the confusion greater 
than it was when she began, the probability is, that 
you will only increase the difficulties by your efforts 
to overcome them. Make haste slowly. The first 
thing you have to do is to attain to ease in the prep- 
aration of your discourses. I dare say, you are 
wondering now how you will ever be able to prepare 
two sermons weekly. But just similar misgivings 
have filled the hearts of all your predecessors ; and 
from my experience, I can affirm that a little systematic 
effort, perseveringly expended, will very soon enable 
you to accomplish that work within such limits as 
will allow opportunity for the discharge of other 
duties. But you will never reach that point if you 
persist in thinking that you cannot reach it. So you 
must begin determined to master that difficulty. 
And, in order to do that thoroughly, you must resist 
the temptations that will be put before you to induce 
you to do a great many more things at the same 
time. These may be very important in their places ; 
but the other is the most important, and they can 
wait. As John Bright once said, " You can't drive 
six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar." Neither 
can you cany on a great number of different enter- 
prises in the first year or two of your pastorate. 
Robert Hall was in the habit of saying, that when 
the devil saw that a young minister was in earnest, 
he got on his back, and rode him to death, in order 






THE PASTCRATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 263 

that he might be the sooner rid of him ; and I be- 
lieve statistics show, that the greatest mortality 
among ministers is during the first three years after 
settlement. Now one, at least, of the causes of that 
is, that most young men put "too many irons into 
the fire " at first. Without stopping until their pul- 
pit preparations have become easy to them, they set 
up a Bible-class, a cottage-meeting, a mission station, 
and so on, and go into each of them with all the 
fervor of juvenile enthusiasm, until warned by fail- 
ing health, when it is too late, they abandon some, or 
may have even to look for another sphere. Now you 
will not understand that I am an advocate of lazi- 
ness, when I say that such a course as that is very 
bad economy indeed. The sixth commandment is, 
" Thou shalt not kill," and it forbids suicide equally 
with murder. Therefore, in your pastorate, as in the 
ascent of a hill, take it leisurely at first, for if you 
run yourself out of breath in the early stages of 
your life-journey, you will have no strength re- 
maining for the later. 

Just before I was settled, I was put on my guard 
against this too common besetment of young minis- 
ters, by an aged elder who took a fatherly interest in 
me. He gave me substantially the advice which I 
am repeating now to you. He said, " Keep yourself 
entirely for your pulpit work until that becomes 
manageable ; then add something else, and when 
that has begun to sit lightly upon you, a third enter- 
prise may be taken in hand ; and so you will go on 
increasing your influence ; but if you begin all these 



264 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

things at once, you will inevitably break down, and 
will have to throw some of them up, thereby giving an 
aspect of failure to your work which it will never re- 
cover." I tried to follow that wise counsel, and to 
that, by the blessing of God upon me, I trace the 
fact, that in a ministry of now nearly three and 
twenty years' duration, I have been incapacitated for 
public work by illness only for the half of one Sab- 
bath. The health-lift will injure you, if you begin 
with trying to raise a thousand pounds ; but if you 
commence with a moderate weight, and go on in- 
creasing it by the scale, you may, perhaps, come up 
to the neighborhood of the larger number, and that 
even with advantage to your physical strength. Now 
it is quite similar here. Work which, taken gradu- 
ally upon you, may be performed at length with a 
sense of invigoration and enjoyment, may kill you, if 
you undertake it all at once. Let your zeal, there- 
fore, in this department be tempered with discretion. 
Again, do not hang everything round your own 
neck. That was what Moses was doing, when his 
father-in-law said to him : " Thou wilt surely wear 
away, both thou and this people that is with thee, 
for this thing is too heavy for thee, thou art not able 
to perform it thyself alone," * and counselled him to 
adopt the principle of the division of labor. Now you 
ought to follow Jethro's advice. Attempt not to 
do everything yourself. Train others for work. Study 
the brethren by whom you are surrounded, and seek 



* Exodus xviii. 18. 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 2 6$ 

to put each to that for which he is best adapted. It 
will not do for the commander-in-chief in the day of 
battle to be mending a broken wagon wheel. He has 
other and more important work on hand ; but such 
details as that may be left to those who are skilled in 
setting them to rights. It is your privilege as a min- 
ister to plan and superintend the campaign ; but you 
cannot be in every place and do everything. The 
movements of the battle are to be executed by others. 
On the Lord's day you give the principles which are to 
regulate your fellow-laborers, and by the help of God's 
Spirit, you furnish the enthusiasm by which they are 
inspired ; but you ought not, save in very exceptional 
cases, as in the beginning of some struggling cause, to 
be the factotum of the church. Cultivate, therefore, the 
faculty of organization. Let your church grow under 
you into a finely-constructed piece of spiritual mech- 
anism, every part of which, as in a steam-engine, shall 
be nicely adapted to all the rest, and the whole calcu- 
lated to tell with effect upon the world around, while 
all you will have to do will be to sustain the water at 
the boiling point so as to generate the power that is 
to keep the whole in motion. 

Finally, here, do not attempt to have everything 
done in your own particular way. I have used the 
illustration of a general with his army, but I did not 
mean to imply that military discipline could be intro- 
duced into the Christian church. Not the commands 
of the minister, but the precepts of Christ are the or- 
ders of the " sacramental host." You must not ex- 
pect, therefore, that everything will be done precisely 

12 



2 66 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

as you wish to have it done. You are to move your 
people by influence, not by authority. If you are a 
wise man they will not be long in discovering it, and 
they will defer to you accordingly. But this deference 
must be mutual, and when you do not see things pre- 
cisely as they do, then your wisdom will suspect that 
you may be in the wrong and will lead you gracefully 
to give way. 

Of course, in all this I am referring to modes of 
operation in which no moral principle is compro- 
mised. True disciples of Christ will not insist upon 
anything that is shown to be contrary to the will 
of the Lord ; but if they should do so, then it will 
be the right time for you to withstand, and when 
you resist on such a ground you will be invin- 
cible. Such occasions, however, will not be of fre- 
quent occurrence ; and in all indifferent matters, when 
your plan is not favored, then be thankful that there 
are so many people in the church wiser than yourself, 
and make the best of it. Do not be always acting 
the part of Cassandra and uttering predictions which 
nobody believes. Above all, if your prophecies should 
come to pass, do not turn round and say, " I told you 
so," but leave the lesson to burn itself in silently, and 
rely upon it that its influence will be felt for many 
days. He who is determined at all hazards to have 
his own will, is lording it over God's heritage, and 
will get more than he is seeking, for he will bring 
upon himself the ill-will of the brotherhood, and that 
will neutralize any amount of pulpit eloquence. It 
is not a very fitting proverb for an abstainer to quote, 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 2 6j 

yet its appositeness to the case in hand may be ex- 
cuse enough for repeating the homely saying, " He 
who will have the last drop in the tankard gets the 
lid on his nose," and if you are resolved to carry 
everything according to your will, you will lay up for 
yourself many a heritage of sorrow. We are the dis- 
ciples of Him who said, " I am among you as he that 
serveth," and self in us should be crucified for His sake. 
There is another side to all this, no doubt, and if 
I were lecturing to church members I would insist 
that they also are bound by these sacred principles ; 
but if there is to be a rivalry as to who should be the 
first to yield, then let the minister look to his laurels, 
and see that no man takes his crown. 

Passing now to the subject of visitation, I would 
say that the pastor's first care should be for the aged, 
the sick, the bereaved, and those who are suffering 
from any kind of trial. The afflicted long for sym- 
pathy, and to whom can they look for that more nat- 
urally than to the minister of Christ ? Let them not 
look in vain. Go to them in tenderness and love, 
with these words sounding in your ears, " Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Do 
not think of such work as if it were a task, or even 
simply a duty, but esteem it a privilege, and seek 
"to lift up them that are bowed down." 

Let your sympathy be real. Do not say that 
which you do not feel. But that you may feel 
rightly, keep yourself in close fellowship with Christ. 



2 68 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

While with the one hand you seek to raise your 
brother out of the depths, put your other into the 
hand of the Saviour, and seek to imbibe the spirit 
which He manifested on His visit to the weeping sis- 
ters at Bethany. 

Consolation will be best imparted by you in the 
words of Scripture, for at such times there is no 
solace like that w r hich is contained in the sayings of 
the Lord Jesus and His inspired servants. Search the 
Bible, therefore, for appropriate passages, and that 
you may have them constantly in readiness, lay them 
up in the memory of the heart. They will be always 
more powerful when you have found them for your- 
self ; but that you may know what a treasury of com- 
fort there is laid up in these ancient oracles, and how 
it may be turned to account in dealing with modern 
sufferers, such a book as that of Andrew Bonar,* the 
biographer of McCheyne, may be very valuable and 
suggestive. 

Sometimes, indeed, it may seem to you that even 
the words of inspiration will fall like hail-stones on 
the sufferer's heart, and you may be fain to take ref- 
uge in silence, solacing yourself the while with 
Whittier's lines : 

" With silence only as their benediction 
God's angel's come ; 
When in the shadow of a great affliction 
The soul sits dumb." 



* The Visitor's Book of Texts ; or, The Word brought nigh to 
the sick and sorrowful. By the Rev. A. A. Bonar. London : 
Nisbet & Co. 



THE PA ST OR A TE AXD PASTORAL VI SIT A TIOJV. 



269 



But even in that unbroken stillness there will be 
comfort, if the tear shall be seen standing in the eye, 
and if, at length, the quiet voice of prayer tenderly 
pleading with God, shall rise out of the darkness. 
On such occasions be not in too much haste to check 
the outburst of grief, or to point the practical lesson 
of the trial. Wait a little, arid ere long a blessed op- 
portunity will come which you may turn to the best 
account both for the mourner and for your Lord. 

Then when you enter the chamber of the sick one, 
cultivate the gentleness of your Master. " Do not 
strive, nor cry, nor lift up your voice." Go with 
muffled footstep into the room. Speak softly and 
tenderly. Lead the sufferer to Christ. Pray with 
him, and in all your exercises let a holy cheerfulness 
surround you like a halo. Be not sombre or gloomy. 
Let the sick one and his nurse feel as if a ray of sun- 
light had come in to gladden them. Do not remain 
so long as to create fatigue, and thus your visits will 
do "good like a medicine," and your return will be 
looked for with eagerness. 

If the illness is mortal, realize the responsibility of the 
position in which you stand, yet do not rashly and blunt- 
ly perform that which is much better accomplished by 
the method of indirectness. Relatives will perhaps in- 
sist that you should inform the sufferer that his recover)' 
is hopeless ; and though I have always felt, that in so 
doing they lay upon us a burden which we ought not 
to be called to bear, yet in such circumstances you 
ought lovingly and gently to lead the mind o\ the 
afflicted one to the contemplation of his departure; 



270 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 

and if he be unconverted, to the consideration of the 
urgency of his repentance and return to God. It is a 
solemn work ; yet trusting in the help of the Holy 
Spirit, you may be enabled to perform it in such a 
way as to bring home the wanderer even at the 
eleventh hour. Be faithful, be tender, be true both 
to the sinner and his Saviour, and you will in no wise 
lose your reward. 

Nor are the benefits of such ministrations to the 
sorrowful and the sick restricted to those to whom 
especially they are rendered. They will open to you 
the hearts of all the members of the household. A 
new love for you and for your work will be born with- 
in their souls, and by a little wisdom on your part, 
you may be blessed in leading them all into the fold. 
Your public discourses at such times will be much 
more interesting to them than they ever were before ; 
your words will fall into the furrows which God's 
afflictions have made in their hearts and the profiting 
will appear after many days. Your kindness at such a 
season will never be forgotten, and always your most 
devoted friends, and those who profit most by your 
labors in the pulpit, will be those whom you have 
visited and comforted in their affliction. The longer 
a minister is with his people, he sees the more of 
them in such tribulation ; and thus it is, if he he 
faithful to his trust, that their hearts twine around 
him, and he seems at length to belong to every 
family among them. How strong such ties are, only 
he can tell, who after they have increasingly encircled 
him for many years, is compelled to break them at 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 



271 



the call of the Master, and to begin his work anew 
among those whom he has never seen. The pain of 
that heart-wrench is in me yet scarcely healed ; but 
the love which caused the pain is indestructible, be- 
cause it is the evidence that the services tenderly 
rendered on the one side, were gratefully received on 
the other, and that the issue was the profit of both 
My young brethren, be much in the homes of sorrow, 
for through your ministrations to the afflicted, your 
pulpit utterances will acquire increasing power. 

On the subject of general systematic visitation of 
your people, perhaps a history of my own experience 
may be more helpful to you than any series of formal 
exhortations. ( I was first settled over a church of 
about one hundred and eighty members, many of 
whom resided in the village in which the place of wor- 
ship was situated, but a considerable number of whom 
were farmers, scattered over an area of about six miles 
in length, by about two in breadth. I made my visits 
systematically week by week, taking the parish in 
manageable districts.") At first I was accompanied on 
each occasion by an elder. It was expected that I 
should ask a few questions of the children, assemble 
the members of the household, give a formal address, 
and then conclude with prayer.^ The presence of the 
" lay brother " was a great embarrassment. I supposed 
that because he was with me I should have a new ad- 
dress in every house, and should have a prayer in every 
instance perfectly distinct from any which 1 had for- 
merly offered. I had not then heard o\ the shrewd 
device by which a minister in one o( the largest cities 



272 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



in Scotland had got rid of his encumbering compan- 
ion. He endured the affliction patiently for one day, 
but on the following week, when it came to the time 
that prayer should be offered in the first house visited, 

he turned to his friend and said, " Mr. , will you 

pray ? " and when he had repeated that request in two 

or three households, Mr. discovered that he 

had an engagement in the city, and disappeared. In 
those early days, however, I was too unsophisticated 
to think of doing anything like that, so I went on from 
house to house, making a new address in each, 
until, when it was towards evening, and I had 
walked perhaps five or six miles, and made ten or 
twelve addresses, I was more dead than alive. You 
cannot wonder, that in these circumstances, pastoral 
visitation became the " bete noir " of my life, and I 
positively hated it. Thus prosecuted, it was simply 
and only drudgery, and so far as I know, was not 
productive of any good result. 

When I removed to Liverpool I began in a different 
way. I made no public announcement of my pur- 
pose to visit in any street or locality, but kept 
steadily before me a certain systematic plan, by 
which I was enabled to get round all the families 
under my care in a reasonable time. I gave up all 
formal addressing, and went into each home as a 
friend and brother in the Lord ; and then when I had 
regained my liberty, my joy returned. I made it my 
business to find out the experiences through which 
the household had passed since I had been last in it. 
As opportunity offered, not obtrusively and profes- 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 273 

sionally, but naturally and incidentally, I dropped a 
word for the Master, and at the close of the visit I 
attempted to gather up into a brief prayer those sup- 
plications which I judged to be most appropriate to 
the circumstances which our conversation had re- 
vealed. 

Thus I went on for several years, when I discovered 
that although I was earnestly doing everything I 
could, I was yet, somehow, failing to satisfy either 
my own conscience or my people's expectations in 
the matter of visiting. I was continually asking my- 
self whether I could not do more ; and each person 
who did not see me in his house during the week, 
imagined that as I had not been to visit him, I had 
not been to see anybody else. So, on looking all 
round the situation, I determined, while preserving 
the informal character of the visitation, to make pub- 
lic announcement on the Sabbath, of the day and the 
district which I meant to take. 

The advantages of this plan were numerous. It 
kept me up to the mark, for having once made the 
engagement, no light thing was permitted to interfere 
with its being carried out. Formerly, if a friend hap- 
pened to call on me on the day and at the hour on 
which in my own mind I had fixed for visitation, I 
was tempted to say, "Well, the visiting can stand 
over;" and I remained with him, leaving arrears oi 
work to accumulate often to a very serious extent. Hut 
now the programme was carried out, no matter who 
should come in at the moment, or what might be the 
state of the weather. Again, it enabled me 
12* 



274 THE ^ IIXISTRY OF THE WORD. 

keep the specified day free from all other pastoral en- 
gagements. If a wedding came to be arranged for, 
the hour was fixed, so as not to interfere with the 
purpose already publicly made known ; if a funeral 
was to be conducted, the time was appointed so as to 
leave this other work untouched. Thus the intima- 
tion of my intention to spend a certain day in visiting 
in a certain locality, cleared the way for its being car- 
ried out. It was an express train, for which all. the 
minor accommodation trains had to give place ; and 
so it happened that at the year's end it reached its 
destination, having lost no time on the road, and all 
the passengers were satisfied. 

Moreover, the public announcement had this in- 
cidental advantage, of which at first I had not 
thought, namely, that it stopped at once all grum- 
bling on the part of the unvisited. They saw that I 
was steadily working week by week somewhere ; it 
became a matter of interest to them to watch my 
progress, and they looked with a certain strange 
eagerness for the day when I should name the street 
in which they resided. I do not know that in the 
long run I actually did much more pastoral work than 
I was doing before, but I accomplished it with 
more ease to myself, and with far more satisfaction 
to my people. 

When I came to Xew York I resumed this prac- 
tice in every particular, save that I found it was 
not always convenient to offer prayer ; and thus far 
it has wrought admirably, for if it were not for the 
interruption of the summer Hegira, and for such 



THE PASTORA TZ AND PASTORAL VI SIT A 71 ON. 



275 



absorbing engagements as that of delivering " Lec- 
tures on Preaching" here and there over the 
country, I would get over my parish in little more 
than eight or nine months. 

But that is only an external history. You want to 
know how to deal with the people themselves in 
visiting them. First, then, shun all stiffness and for- 
mality. Never mind your dignity ; think of your 
Master, and go everywhere out of love to Him. " Turn 
your hand upon the little ones." Be not so pompous 
and formidable that the children will run to hide 
themselves at your approach. There was a whole 
volume of pastoral theology in the reply of the High- 
land shepherd to the question how it came that he 
took so many prizes for the best flock at the cattle 
shows. He said, " I look weel to the lambs." So look 
you well to the lambs. Encourage them to come to 
you ; and by your tenderness to them, you will 
easily enter into their parents' hearts. 

Be natural and affable. Do not surround yourself 
with chevaux de frise as if you were a marble statue 
in the midst of a crowded thoroughfare ; but let your 
heart be open and your words be free. And while 
you will never allow yourself to forget that you are 
there in the name of the Lord, do not drag- in the sub- 
ject of religion in such a way as to make the whole 
matter distasteful. Cultivate the art o\ incidental al- 
lusion, and if you make a transition in the conversa- 
tion, make it naturally, so that everybody will not be 
jolted into silence. We must find out that in which 
our friends are interested, and descending to their 



276 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

level therein, we shall be able to lift them more easily 
to that which we desire to set before them. A friend 
told me that he went one evening into the room 
where his son was taking lessons in singing, and found 
the tutor urging him to sound a certain note. Each 
time the lad made the attempt, however, he fell short, 
and the teacher kept on saying to him, " Higher ! 
higher ! " But it was all to no purpose, until, descend- 
ing to the tone which the boy was sounding, the mu- 
sician accompanied him with his own voice, and led 
him gradually up to that which he wanted him to 
sing, and then he sounded it with ease. 

You have heard the story of Edward Irving and the 
infidel shoe-maker who seemed resolutely bent on re- 
fusing to hold any communication with him. Going 
up to his " seat," Irving lifted apiece of patent-leather, 
which was then a recent invention, and, as his father was 
a tanner, he knew so much about it that he was able to 
speak intelligently regarding it; the "sutor" con- 
tinued at his work, preserving silence as long as he 
could, until exasperated by what he thought the pre- 
tension of the minister, he asked : " What do ye ken 
aboot leather ? " Irving, in reply, went into the whole 
subject, and, after a time, won by his acquaintance 
with the matter of his craft, the shoe-maker said : 
"You're a decent kind o fellow; do you preach ?" 
On the following Sabbath the vanquished cobbler 
made his appearance for the first time at church, and 
became a regular attendant on Irving's ministry, ex- 
cusing himself to all who wondered at his conduct by 



THE PASTORATE AND PASTORAL VISITATION. 277 

saying, " He's a sensible man yon, he kens aboot 
leather!"* 

Now, an incident like that indicates that in order 
to turn pastoral visitation to good account we must 
interest ourselves in the common labors and expe- 
riences of our people, and enter through that 
door into their hearts. I was one evening driven 
home from a farmer's house, a distance of some six or 
seven miles, by a frank young boy, who at once got 
into conversation with me. He talked about the farm, 
the horses and the dog, and then by some subtle link 
of association the subject was changed to that of the 
school. I soon discovered that his favorite study was 
arithmetic, and asked him what he was doing in it : 
" O," he replied, " I am in profit and loss." " Can 
you do all the examples in it ? " " Yes, some of them 
were very hard, but I have done them all ; I did the 
last to-day." " I think I could give you one in that 
rule that you could not do." " I doubt it ; let me 
hear it." " It is this : i What shall it profit a man if 
he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? ' 
Could you work that out?" " No," said he, as a 
thoughtful expression came over his countenance ; 
" that's beyond me, I admit." Thus, having won his 
confidence and affection, it was easy for me to speak 
with him in such a way that his whole nature was 
aroused, and by and by he gave himself to the 
Lord. 



* See " The Life of Edward Irving,"by Mrs. Oliphant, pp, 1 10. 
in. 



278 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

Or, to take another illustration : Suppose I enter 
a house, in which are many beautiful engravings ; 
among these there is one of Holman Hunt's deeply 
suggestive painting, " The Light of the World," and 
from that it is easy to pass to the text which the pic- 
ture illustrates : " Behold I stand at the door and 
knock." Or I may tell the following story about the 
artist who produced the work : Some seven or eight 
summers ago a distinguished non-conformist divine of 
England was a guest in the house of the gentleman 
who now owns the original painting. At the time of 
his visit the picture was undergoing the process of 
re-framing, and so he was permitted to examine it 
minutely. In one of the lower corners, where the 
words would in ordinary circumstances have been cov- 
ered by the frame, he found in the handwriting of the 
artist himself this expression : " Nee me praetermittas 
Domine" " Nor pass me by, O Lord ! " and so from the 
prayer of the painter a very natural lesson, all the more 
powerful because of its incidental character, may be 
read to the possessor of the engraving. 

To succeed in such work as this, however, we must 
cultivate general intelligence, and be ever on the 
watch for incidents and illustrations which we may 
use thus as we go from house to house. " Parlor 
preaching " is in its own place only inferior in impor- 
tance to " pulpit preaching." It needs great wealth 
of resources, and, most of all, it requires that habitual 
spiritually-mindedness which is holding fellowship 
with Christ even in the commonest occupations. You 
will never succeed in your visitation if you go to it 



THE PASTOR A TE AND PASTORAL VI SIT A TION. 



279 



with an effort, and as a duty. But when you start 
out for the love of Jesus, and in His name, your exer- 
cise will be a joy to yourself and full of profit to those 
on whom you call. 

Nor will the benefit of it be only direct. It will 
bring the families whom you have seen, with new in- 
terest to the sanctuary, and put their minds into a 
state of greater impressibility. They are no longer 
at arm's length from you. They have grasped your 
hand, they have heard your heart-throb in their 
homes, and now your words take stronger hold upon 
their souls. John Brown's ' Jeames ' said, in regard to 
prayer, " There is no good done till we come to close 
grips with God." But it is just as true in regard to 
preaching that we do little for men until we get into 
personal dealing with them. If I am firing at a target 
with a rifle, I want to know whether I have hit the 
bull's-eye. And if I am in earnest in preaching on 
the Lord's day, I desire to discover whether any 
results have followed. Now it is only through pas- 
toral visitation that I can follow up my sermons. 
Thus, while in some cases it lets me see where I can 
drive a nail to advantage, in others it enables me to 
clinch a nail which I have already driven. 

You will make a great mistake, therefore, if you 
undervalue the visitation of your people. The pulpit 
is your throne, no doubt; but then a throne is stable 
only when it rests on the affections of the people, 
and to get their affections you must visit them in their 
dwellings. I used to look upon my visitation as a 
dreadful drudgery, but it has now become my joy : 



2 8o THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

so that whenever I am tempted to despond I sally 
forth to visit my flock ; and as I look sadly back upon 
those early years in which I had no such gladness, I 
am earnestly desirous to save you from blundering as 
I did. 

Begin this work as your pastorate begins. If you 
cannot fully master your pulpit preparations at first, 
so as to secure the time needful for systematic 
visitation, yet never omit the care of the sick and 
the afflicted ; and at the earliest possible moment 
enter upon the regular prosecution of this important 
department of your labors. It will " mellow and 
fatten " the roots of your own character. It will feed 
your public prayers. It will furnish many themes 
and suggestions for your pulpit teachings. It will 
cheer you on in a thousand ways in your arduous 
exertions, and as the years revolve you will come to 
be regarded almost as a member of every family, and 
be rewarded by the confidence and affection of the flock 
as a whole. On that you may always rest as securely 
as the swimmer does upon the wave; and your 
character among your people will add an irresistible 
ingredient to the eloquence of your speech. 



LECTURE XII. 

THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT TO PRESENT QUES- 
TIONS. 



LECTURE XII. 

THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT TO PRESENT QUES- 
TIONS. 

TTE who would be successful in the ministry of the 
J — L Word must give himself wholly to it. When 
the apostles responded to the Master's call " they 
forsook all and followed Him ;" and no one who is 
really called to the work of the pastorate will be able 
to combine with that any other occupation. When 
Chalmers was first settled at Kilmany he tried to 
unite with his ministry the teaching of mathematics 
and chemistry at St. Andrews, and assured his father 
that Saturday was sufficient for the preparation of 
his discourses. But after he had passed the great 
crisis of his life, he was constrained to devote every 
moment of his time and every energy of his being to 
the duties of his office. And every earnest pastor 
will feel as he then did. No one who has any right 
idea of the importance of the ministry, will consent 
to regard it as a merely secondary or subordinate 
thing. He will not be able to satisfy himself with 
less than unreserved consecration to his calling; and 
if he is to preach sermons that will compel men to 
listen to them, they must be the product o\ his un- 
distracted labor. The river of the week must flow 
with undivided current into the pulpit. He must 

(283) 



284 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



live, and move, and have his being, in and for his 
work. 

He cannot afford, as a regular thing, to become a 
peripatetic lecturer, or to be the principal of an edu- 
cational establishment, or to conduct a newspaper, or 
to devote himself to some field of scientific inquiry. 
He may have sufficient ability to do both things. 
He may even, by dint of good management and hard 
work, contrive to secure time enough for both. But 
his heart will be divided between them, and that will 
be fatal to his efficiency in the pulpit. His ministry 
must have the whole of him, else ere long the " unc- 
tion " will evaporate out of his speech, and the spell 
of his eloquence will be broken. 

He who desires success as a preacher, therefore, 
must be content to leave many other things alone. 
He may have dreamed in early years of winning fame 
in the republic of letters, or of rising to eminence in 
some scientific pursuit, but all such ambitions must 
now be given up for Christ. The prizes of commerce 
and the honors of statesmanship are not for him. He 
has been called to labor in another field, whereon the 
harvests are immortal souls ; and so eager is he in its 
cultivation, that he cannot consent to give any part 
of himself to other engagements. So soon as he does 
that, the joy of his heart will disappear, and the glory 
of his ministry will depart. 

Be it yours, therefore, uncompromisingly to resist 
every overture that may be made to you to give any 
part of your time and strength, as a constant thing, 
to any other object than your ministry. The sucker 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 285 

in the end will kill the tree ; therefore take heed that 
it be not permitted to spring up. It were better that 
you should renounce the ministry altogether than 
that you should continue in it half-heartedly, giving 
the greater part of your time and thoughts to some- 
thing else than the feeding and shepherding of the 
flock of God. 

But though I would urge you to keep yourself ex- 
clusively to your calling, I would not have you to 
adopt a narrow or restricted idea of that calling. 
You have range enough in the pulpit to satisfy any 
ordinary ambition ; and it is at once your privilege 
and your duty there to bring the principles and 
motives of the Gospel of Christ to bear upon the cir- 
cumstances of your times, and the questions that are 
agitating the minds of men. 

Thus there are many social subjects intimately con- 
nected with the welfare of the people, which not only 
may be treated of, but which ought to be treated of, 
in the pulpit. Foremost among these is the condi- 
tion of a large proportion of the poorer classes of the 
land, who, in popular speech, are called the masses. 
What ignorance, intemperance, immorality, and crime 
prevail among them! We talk of heathenism with 
horror, but there are multitudes almost at our own 
doors, and within the sound of our church bells, who 
are living in circumstances as debasing as any to he 
found in pagan lands. The car of Juggernaut has 
not crushed as many victims as intemperance is an- 
nually destroying in our cities; and India lias no 
cruelties more horrid than those which are almost 



286 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

nightly committed by the criminal classes in our 
country. What dens of infamy and homes of sin 
there are in all our cities, infecting by their impurity 
even the households of those who are themselves 
ashamed even to name the abominations of which 
they are the scene ! 

Then in another department, who among us has not 
been filled with sad forebodings for the future, as he 
has marked the growing conflict between capital and 
labor, and the ever increasing estrangement between 
employers and employed, now rumbling ominously 
like some far-off earthquake, and now breaking out 
into the volcanic eruption of a disastrous strike? 
While at the other extremity of the social scale, the 
luxury and extravagance, the ostentatious rivalry in 
the keeping up of appearances, the heartless worldli- 
ness, and the grasping selfishness, are utterly appall- 
ing. 

Now these are things that the Christian preacher 
cannot pass by on the other side. He has been made 
a minister for the very purpose of grappling with 
them, and it will be treachery to his office and trea- 
son to his Lord, if he refuse to deal with them. They 
threaten the very life of the nation, and he is set upon 
the watch-tower for the very purpose of giving an 
alarm. Some one has compared the republic under 
which we live to a pyramid, having its base composed 
of the great masses of the people, and rising up, nar- 
rowing as it rises, through legislatures, judges, and 
governors, until it finds its apex in him who sits in 
the presidential chair ; and it is alleged that this is 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 287 

the most stable form of government. And so it is, 
if the pyramid be composed of the most enduring 
materials. But if the base be honey-combed with in- 
temperance, the central portions corroded with ex- 
travagance, and the upper layers disintegrated by 
dishonesty, how long will the whole fabric last ? 

But more even than the welfare of the nation is 
endangered by the social evils of which we speak. 
They imperil also the life of the church. Its mem- 
bers cannot live in the neighborhood of such things 
without being in some degree contaminated. If 
malaria is in the district, you cannot confine it to one 
house. Its influence enters more or less into every 
dwelling. And the Church and the State are not so 
completely separated, even in this land, that the one 
cannot be affected by the other. Their very prox- 
imity to each other makes the danger of the one a 
peril also to the other. I went once with a friend 
into his garden, and, observing in one part of it, a 
plentiful crop of a very troublesome weed, I asked 
him how he came to have so much of it. He said, 
"My neighbor was absent from his house three 
months last year, and let his garden run wild ; it was 
just at the time when that particular weed was run- 
ning to seed, and the wind blew the downy things 
over here. It would have paid me to have hired a 
man to clean his garden for him, but then, you see. I 
did not think of it in time." So, be sure, if we in the 
church allow those evils in the community to go on 
unchecked, the seeds that spring from them will blow 
over into our own garden, and produce there confu- 
sion and every evil work. 



288 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

How long will our cities be safe places for the 
godly upbringing of our sons and daughters, if we 
permit the impurity and iniquity in which they 
abound to grow rampant in the midst of them ? The 
life of the church, therefore, depends on its aggres- 
siveness, and the ministers of the Gospel must lead 
forth their people to this new crusade. We must 
not allow our hearers to rest contented in the thought 
that if only they are benefited, and gratified, and 
comforted by our discourses, and labors in the midst 
of them, there is nothing else to be desired. We must 
rouse them to a sense of their duty to those around 
them who are perishing for lack of knowledge ; we 
must urge them on, by the highest and holiest con- 
siderations, to prayer and liberality, and personal ex- 
ertion for the welfare of the fallen and degraded in 
the land ; and as occasion offers, we must give our- 
selves enthusiastically to evangelistic work in the 
streets or lanes by which our stately churches are sur- 
rounded. 

For the Gospel which we preach is the only remedy 
that can meet the manifold evils of society. All 
these are only so many different symptoms of the one 
disease of sin, and nothing can permanently remove 
them save that which eradicates it. Hence the vari- 
ous agencies which men have proposed and experi- 
mented with for the purpose of improving the condi- 
tion of the masses, valuable as they have been in 
some respects, have failed to get at the source of the 
evil. They have " skinned and filmed the ulcerous 
sore," but left the constitutional malady, of which it 



THE RELATION OE THE PULPIT. 289 

was the symptom, to break out in some other direc- 
tion. They have dammed up the stream for a little, 
and sent its waters over into places which were before 
uncovered ; but they have not dried up the fountain- 
head. The only thing which can regenerate society, 
is that which can regenerate the individual heart, to 
wit, the power of the Holy Ghost working in and 
through the belief of the truth as it is in Jesus. Now 
as we are set not merely for the defence, but also for 
the diffusion of that truth, it is imperative on us that 
we stir up both ourselves and our people, to take 
means for proclaiming it to the outcasts around us. 
We must " go out into the streets and lanes of the 
cities, and compel them to come in," Most evidently 
we ministers cannot personally carry on such a work, 
and at the same time satisfy all the demands that are 
made upon us as pastors, especially if our pastorate 
should happen to be in a great city. But it is not 
necessary that we should. Our object ought to be to 
stimulate every Christian to become himself a home 
missionary; and to furnish him, week by week, with 
truth appropriate for his use in that capacity, and 
with motive strong enough to sustain him in its proc- 
lamation. We should aim so to preach that no idler can 
remain comfortable under our ministrations, and we 
should seek by a wise organization to realize the ideal 
of Wesley in our church, "At work, all at work, and 
always at work." EVERY BELIEVER A MISSIONARY ; 
that must be our watchword, and then our Sabbath 
services will be the rallying points at which we come 
together to recruit our wearied energies, and from 

13 



290 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

which we go forth with new enthusiasm to our holy 
work. Admirably has it been said by the author of 
" Ecce Homo " : " Men who meet within the church 
walls on Sunday, should not meet as strangers who 
find themselves together in the same lecture hall ; 
but as co-operators in a public work, the object of 
which all understand, and to his own department of 
which each man habitually applies mind and his 
contriving power. Thus meeting, with the esprit de 
coi'ps strong among them, and with a clear perception 
of the purpose of their union and their meeting, they 
would not desire that the exhortation of the preacher 
should be what in the nature of things it seldom can 
be — eloquent. . . . It might then become weighty 
with business, and impressive as an officer's address 
to his troops before a battle. For it would be ad- 
dressed by a soldier to soldiers, in the presence of an 
enemy whose character they understood, and in a war 
with whom they had given and received telling 
blows."* 

But even when we have got all our people up to 
the working point, there will be need for some central 
agency round which their operations must be con- 
ducted ; and I cannot but think that the enterprise 
which Christian men are now carrying on in the city 
of New York, is designed, in the Providence of God, 
to lead to some developments in home missionary 
matters which shall be fraught with blessing to the 
land. 



* "Ecce Homo," pp. 225, 226. 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 



291 



For one thing it has shown, that the lowest stratum 
of the population can be reached with the Gospel. 
In conversation with a friend the other day, I learned 
that the missionary who labors in the Tombs, informed 
him that the number of prisoners was smaller than it 
had been for a long time, and he traced that state of 
things to the fact that the roughs of the city were at- 
tending at the Hippodrome, and so were at least kept 
out of mischief thereby. And this testimony was 
strikingly confirmed by one of the police who are in reg- 
ular waiting at the Hippodrome. He told my inform- 
ant that on the first night of the services, he was posi- 
tively alarmed to see such a collection of the " hard- 
est " criminals of the city in the section of the hall 
under his care. He feared that they might attempt 
some outbreak, but they sat quietly all through, and 
the greater number of them come now every night. 
Another friend mentioned to me that while he was 
in the inquiry-room a man came to him in great 
distress, under the deepest conviction of sin, saying 
to him, " I did not come here to seek salvation ; I 
came to pick pockets ; but the Lord has laid hold of 
me, and I mean to turn to Him." Now these inci- 
dents show that the people can be reached. They 
will come to hear the Gospel when they have a fitting 
opportunity, and the Gospel is in their case also " the 
power of God unto salvation." 

Again, these services show that some men are bet- 
ter qualified than others for reaching these classes. 
It is needless to attempt to analyze the elements of 
Mr. Moody's and Mr. Sankey's power. They ate 



292 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



men, I believe, as truly raised up by God for their 
work as were Wesley and Whitefield, Nettleton and 
Finney ; and their success is their attestation. Now 
does not this indicate to us that when a man shows 
such eminent fitness for this particular work, he should 
be at once laid hold of, and statedly employed in it ? 
We have got into certain ecclesiastical ruts, and are 
in danger of sacrificing life to order. Why should we 
not, however, have even this great benefit in an 
orderly way? There are men who could do nothing 
or next to nothing as pastors, who would yet be be- 
yond all price as peripatetic evangelists. What 
hinders that they should be at once recognized in 
that character, and sent forth from city to city and 
from village to village, two and two, like the first dis- 
ciples? It seems to me that if such a plan were 
adopted, we might have, not in one city only, but in 
every city of the Union, some earnest and attractive 
man of God laboring with a power only second to 
that which is attending the Lord's messengers in 
New York to-day. 

Still farther, these services show that Christian co- 
operation between the members of different denomi- 
nations is a possible thing. In the inquiry-rooms at 
the Hippodrome you will find Episcopalians, Baptists, 
Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, all 
earnestly at work in seeking to point souls to Christ. 
Now if all this may last for two months, why should 
it not last for years? Could we not have a per- 
manent Hippodrome in New York, supplied by men 
whom God may raise up, and officered, as it is to- 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 293 

day, by Christians of all evangelical denominations ? 
And have we not in this a gleam of light thrown 
upon that darkest, saddest social problem of our 
times, how to elevate the masses of our large cities ? 
But whatever else may or may not be done, thus 
much is clear, that every minister should stir up his 
people to personal exertion in this great cause. You 
may say, indeed, that he cannot be always preaching 
upon it ; and if you mean by that, that he is not to 
be expected to be continually discoursing set sermons 
on the evil of intemperance and how to meet it, or on 
the claims of the non-church-going population on the 
attention of the church, or on the different branches 
of that upas tree which is poisoning our social life, 
you are probably right. That course might aggravate 
and irritate, instead of stimulating to work. But 
while he may occasionally preach an entire sermon 
upon some one particular evil, and show how the 
Gospel is to be brought to bear upon it, he will be 
wiser if he deal with all such questions incidentally, and 
if after he has conclusively established some general 
principles, he should turn unexpectedly upon his hear- 
ers and show them how these are to be applied to 
present circumstances. It is just here, indeed, that he 
will be able to turn his habit to consecutive exposition 
of most valuable account. For no matter where he be- 
gins such a work, he will not go on very far without 
finding some excellent opportunity of saying sonic- 
thing on these social subjects that may "strike and 
stick." He can scarcely open the very first book o\ 
Scripture without coming upon the excuse of the 



294 THE MINISTR Y 0F THE WORD. 

selfish fratricide, " Am I my brother's keeper?" and 
he will be no faithful shepherd if he do not from that 
expose the Cain-like spirit of too many of our modern 
hearers of the Gospel. Not many chapters more shall 
have passed before he confronts the drunkenness of 
Noah and Lot, and the fearful consequences that 
sprung out of the defilement of Dinah, and in these he 
will have unsought and incidental opportunities for 
the proclamation of truths, which are too often utterly 
ignored in the pulpit. So again, if he take up the 
sweet pastoral of Ruth, he will not go far until he 
hear the mutual greeting of Boaz and his reapers 
when he said unto them, " The Lord be with you," 
and they answered him, " The Lord bless thee," and 
that will give him scope enough for treating the whole 
question as between employers and employed, and 
suggest the true and only remedy, namely, the com- 
mon brotherhood of both in the Lord. And if he go 
on through the history of the Kings, he may find a 
lesson for the ostentation of the times in the fact that 
the display which Hezekiah made of his treasures be- 
fore the eyes of the Assyrian ambassadors was im- 
mediately followed by the invasion of the Assyrian 
host. 

If he should open the New Testament, he cannot 
expound the Sermon on the Mount without coming 
down with withering power upon the evils of the 
times ; or enforce the parable of the Good Samaritan 
without stirring up his people to sacrifice their money 
and their comfort for the good of others. In a word, 
he cannot stand beneath the cross and contemplate 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 



2Q" 



the sacrifice which Christ made there for sinners of 
mankind, without crying out himself, and leading 
others to cry out, " What shall I render to the Lord 
for all His benefits?" and they cannot present such a 
prayer sincerely without having their eyes opened to 
see the poor half-dead ones whom sin has wounded 
and cruelty has scarred, lying all around, waiting for 
a brother's help. Thus his pulpit will become a 
center of influence, the results of which may tell on 
thousands whom he has never seen. My young 
brethren, aim at making your pulpits such centers ; 
take as your motto the words of Robert Nicol when 
he left his Perthshire home for the editorial chair, 
"We'll make the world better yet." Shake off all 
slothfulness and indifference. Go forth, trusting in 
the might, and the majesty, and the grace of Him 
whom you serve, and He will make you the means of 
salvation to multitudes. Linger not, for while you 
delay, souls are going down to an undone eternity. 
Falter not, for greater is He that is in you than he that 
is in the world ; and when men would urge you to sit 
still, make answer in the words of the noble Port 
Royalist, " What ! shall we not have a whole eternity 
to rest in?" or in the loftier words of the Master 
himself, " I must work the work of him that sent me 
while it is day ; the night cometh when no man can 
work." 

But there is another class of subjects concerning 
which it maybe well to define somewhat precisely the 
province of the pulpit. I refer now to the political. 



296 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



The Christian is a citizen as well as a saint, and he 
should manifest his piety in the discharge of his civic 
duties. Hence it is clearly within the range of the 
pulpit to insist occasionally on the importance of 
Christians taking a practical interest in political mat- 
ters. It has come to pass among us that all such 
things are left, I will not say exclusively, but largely, 
to those who have no regard for the Gospel of Christ ; 
and so the whole class of men who engage in them is 
brought under reproach. Now that is a sore evil, not 
only for the State, but for the Church. The State can- 
not be entrusted to the management of such men 
without suffering detriment ; and the members of the 
Church cannot live in the habitual neglect of a positive 
duty without entailing some injury upon themselves. 
Let the minister, therefore, when a fitting opportunity 
comes, exhort Christians earnestly to assume their 
proper responsibility as citizens. Let him show that 
it is as much a privilege and a duty to take part in 
the details of civil government, as it is to participate 
in the ordinances of religious worship ; and let him 
exhort all to take their Christianity with them in the 
exercise of their civil rights, and to go to the ballot- 
box with as thorough a resolution to serve God there 
as they make when they are going to the communion 
table. This is the only way to purify our political 
life ; and if the ministers of the Gospel shall not urge 
their people to adopt it, how is relief to be obtained ? 
" Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost 
its savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? it is thence- 
forth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden 
under foot of men." 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 



297 



But, while it is the duty of the preacher thus to 
seek to purify and elevate political life, by showing 
that it is only one department of Christian activity, 
he must not use his pulpit in the interests of any 
party in the State. He is a citizen as well as other 
men, and ought to avail himself of his privileges as such, 
but it is a fair matter for argument whether or not he 
should ever allow himself to become prominent on 
either of the two sides into which politicians are 
divided. It is conceivable, however, that the ques- 
tions under discussion may have such moral and 
religious bearings that he feels compelled to use his 
influence for one rather than another, and at such a 
time he may, in my judgment, give public utterance 
to his sentiments, and seek to enforce the reasons 
which have commended them to his adoption. But 
he must not do so in the pulpit. He must go for 
such a purpose to the political platform, and take his 
chance of being met by counter-argument or demon- 
strations of dissent. The pulpit gives no opportunity 
of reply to the hearer; and it is not only unseemly, 
but unfair for its occupant to take advantage of the 
battlements within which he is there entrenched for 
the firing of a party gun. Let him have the courage 
of his convictions, and go with his speech where men 
can hiss at him or answer him if they choose. But 
let him not request people to come to the sanctuary 
for the worship of God, and then take advantage of 
the fact that he has it all his own way, for " pitching 
in" to them on some political question. His appear- 
ance in the political arena will be all the more effect- 



298 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



ive if it be known that he has kept all partizanship 
out of the house of God. 

There may be exceptional times, as when the crisis 
of some great agony or conflict is upon the nation, 
when it may be imperative on the preacher to take the 
matter with him into the pulpit ; but in all ordinary 
cases when he carries party politics into the sanctuary, 
he is doing a certain evil for the attainment of an un- 
certain good, which, after all, even if certain, might be 
as well attained elsewhere. He may please some, but 
he will undoubtedly so irritate others as to turn them 
away from him even when he is dealing in those faith- 
ful sayings which are " worthy of all acceptation/' 

Some will say that by giving this advice I am ad- 
vocating a cowardly policy. But it is quite otherwise. 
The cowardice will consist in the minister's sheltering 
himself behind the safeguards of the pulpit. It is an 
easy thing to be vehement and demonstrative, and 
even defiant, when a man knows that nobody then 
present has the right to peep or mutter either in dis- 
sent or in reply. The true courage will consist in 
going to fight the battle, where a battle is possible — ■ 
on the political platform, and seeking there to win the 
day for truth, for purity, and for freedom. 

Even that, however, should be the rare exception 
with the minister of Christ, and he should take such 
a course only when some sacred right of humanity is 
assailed, or some moral principle is in danger of being 
violated, or some matter of religious liberty and 
equality is imperilled. 

Generally speaking, he will serve the nation best by 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 299 

adhering to his high spiritual vocation ; for the pros- 
perity of the country depends on the character of 
the people, and nothing can make and mould char- 
acter like the Gospel of Christ. 

But I pass now to an entirely different class of 
questions, which in their own department are not less 
important than those to which I have already alluded. 
I mean those which have been developed by the ad- 
vancement of science. It has been alleged that the 
statements of the Word of God are inconsistent with 
the discoveries of our physical philosophers. 

Now, here, my first counsel is, that in relation to 
all such subjects the preacher should not be an 
alarmist. Do not give your people the idea that the 
revelation of God is endangered by every fragment 
of a "jaw-bone" that may be discovered at "Abbe- 
ville " or elsewhere. Be open and receptive towards 
sicence. If on its own evidence the Bible is true, you 
may be sure that in the end no other truth can harm 
it. It betrays weakness in the defenders of the Word 
of God when they are so excited about little things. 
Besides, they have no need to be afraid. The fact of 
Christ's resurrection from the dead is not to be im- 
perilled by any question concerning chronology or the 
antiquity of the race. 

Again, do not be always attacking scientific men. 
Nothing has been more painful to me in listening to 
discourses, especially from young men, than to hear 
the light and flippant tone in which some oi the 
greatest discoverers of the age were alluded to. 



30o 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



They communicated the impression that there is 
some special affinity between science and infidelity. 
But that is very far, indeed, from being the case. 
The noble Faraday was as conspicuous for his hum- 
ble faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as he was for his 
marvellous researches into magnetism and its related 
sciences ; and during the meetings of the British As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, a year or 
two ago, at Edinburgh, there were maintained by 
some of its members, morning gatherings for prayer, 
as remarkable in their character as those which are 
held at the anniversary of the American Board 
among ourselves. Therefore, it is not only ungener- 
ous, but untrue, to insinuate that science inevitably 
leads to scepticism. 

Furthermore, do not attempt to answer any of the 
objections raised by some men of science, unless you 
have fully and fairly mastered the subject from their 
point of view. It is unfortunate that on each side of 
this modern debate, much ignorance prevails regard- 
ing the department of the other. Scientific investi- 
gators have not had a theological training. The ten- 
dency of their pursuits, as Jouffroy has well said, is 
" to concentrate all their minds in their eyes and 
hands." They are apt, therefore, to have no proper 
appreciation of moral evidence, and to ignore the in- 
tuitions of the soul itself. But in theologians we 
have just the opposite evil. They have had no scien- 
tific training, and in their vivid realization of the im- 
portance of spiritual truth, they are apt to depreciate 
the labors of the physical philosopher. Now, in 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 



301 



these circumstances it will be foolish, not to say fool- 
hardy, in you to attack the positions of the man of 
science, unless you are equally familiar with the sub- 
ject with himself. The true mediators here must be 
men who can lay their hands upon both parties, and 
who have the piety of the Christian, combined with 
the insight and comprehension of the man of science. 
It will be well, therefore, to leave the harmonizing of 
the two to such men as are equally at home in both 
departments. A lumbering and ineffective reply is a 
thousand times worse than none ; and if you cannot 
speak with the authority of conclusiveness, the best 
thing you can do is to lead sinful souls to Christ, and 
let them receive from Him such experimental evi- 
dence of the reality of His salvation as no power of 
infidelity will ever shake; 

But, without attempting to answer the objections 
which have been raised from modern discovery, you 
may do good service occasionally by pointing out 
where precisely the discrepancies emerge. The scien- 
tific man believes in the infallibility of nature ; the 
theologian believes in the infallibility of Scripture ; 
and the differences, of which so much is made in these 
days, lie, not between nature and revelation in them- 
selves, but between human interpretations o( them. 
The man of science interprets his facts in a certain 
way, and makes certain deductions from them. These 
interpretations and deductions, however, are not in- 
fallible ; they are not yet all unqtiestioningly received 
by scientific men themselves. It is too soon, there- 
fore, to speak and reason, as if the}- were absolutely 
correct. 



302 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 



Again, the theologian's interpretations of Scripture 
are by no means infallible. Many of them which 
were accepted in past days, have been disproved and 
others substituted for them ; and of many more it 
must be said that they are still unsettled. For in- 
stance, he would be a rash man who should assert 
that he has discovered, with infallible accuracy, the 
meaning of the first chapter of Genesis ; or should 
affirm that he can satisfactorily unravel the chro- 
nology of the early chapters of that book. These 
questions, and many others like them, are still sub 
judice, and the wise course for all parties to this 
modern misunderstanding is to wait, with mutual re- 
spect for each other, until God, in His providence and 
by His spirit, shall lead to such interpretations of 
nature on the one hand and of Scripture on the other, 
as shall make manifest their perfect harmony. Let 
the man of science go on with perseverance, and let 
him not take any mischievous delight in flinging his 
hypotheses at the Word of God. Let the theologian 
also prosecute his inquiries with diligence and de- 
voutness, and let him give over calling men of science 
by evil names. They seem often to be working 
against each other ; but they are in reality working 
for each other and for the truth. In the formation 
of the tunnel through Mont Cenis, the workmen 
began at opposite ends, and approached each other 
with driving machines apparently directed against 
each other, but met at length in the middle to con- 
gratulate each other on the completion of their great 
undertaking, because they were working under the 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT, 



303 



same supervision. So it will be with our theologians 
and men of science. God, the great architect of prov- 
idence, is superintending both ; and by and by, 
through the labors of both, the mountain of difficulty 
will be tunnelled through, no more to form a barrier 
in the inquirer's way. 

You may do much also in this matter by calling at- 
tention to such principles as these, namely : that the 
Bible was not designed to be a revelation of physical 
science; that its references to all such subjects are 
merely incidental, and made in popular language ; 
that, if it had alluded to such subjects in other than 
popular language, it would have been unintelligible 
to those to whom it was first given, and would have 
been rejected by them for containing that which 
some modern philosophers complain that it does not 
contain ; that, considering the fact that it refers only 
incidentally to these topics, its language concerning 
some of them is occasionally very striking, and fully 
in harmony with modern discoveries ; and finally, 
that considering the course of things in the past, and 
how what seemed at one time to be in hopeless an- 
tagonism to God's Word, is now held intelligently and 
consistently with it, the wise course will be for both 
sides to wait before the one tries to prove that there 
is contradiction, or the other to enforce a harmony. 

Moreover, we should not allow it to be forgotten 
that, all advances of modern science notwithstanding, 
there will ever be deep, solemn, all-important ex- 
periences in the human soul which only God's Gospel 
can meet; and if we dig down to these we shall go SO 



304 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

much lower than science, that the water which she has 
apparently drawn from our well will return into our 
spring. There will still be the poison of sin, w r hich no 
earthly antidote can neutralize, and which can be 
counteracted only by the blood of the Redeemer's 
cross. There will still be the sorrow of bereavement, to 
be solaced only by the vision of the angel at the door 
of the sepulchre, and the hearing of his soothing 
words, " Why seek ye the living among the dead ? 
He is not here ; He is risen as He said ; come see the 
place where the Lord lay." There will still be the 
sense of lonesomeness stealing over the heart, even 
amid the bustle, and business, and prosperity of the 
world, to be dispelled only by the consciousness of 
the Saviour's presence. There will still be the spirit- 
shudder at the thought of death, which only faith in 
Christ can change into the desire to depart and to be 
with Him, which is far better. For these things 
science has no remedy, and philosophy no solace, and, 
strong in its adaptation to these irrepressible necessi- 
ties of the human heart, the Gospel of Christ will out- 
live all philosophical attack and survive every form of 
scientific unbelief. 

But though all that is true, I would not have you 
speak of Religion and Science as if they were antag- 
onists. They are elder and younger sister in the 
same family ; and though occasionally they may 
seem to be at variance, yet let but some deep 
grief enter into the home, or some heavy calamity 
fall upon the dwelling, and all misunderstanding 
between them will disappear ; they will lock them- 



THE RELATION OF THE PULPIT. 305 

selves in each other's arms, and science will find 
her resting-place on the bosom of religion. You 
can afford, therefore, to bid science God-speed ! 
Her triumphs will in the end contribute to the Gos- 
pel's advancement. Is it not written, " All things are 
yours"? And you may rest assured that truth in 
one department can never falsify that which, on its 
own evidence, has been already ascertained to be true 
in another. 

And now, gentlemen, I have reached the end of my 
labors among you ; and while there is a sense of 
liberty in my heart, to which for months it has been 
a stranger, inasmuch as I have now relieved myself 
of that load of responsibility which my acceptance of 
this Lectureship put upon me, yet I cannot part from 
you, with whom I have been brought even so slightly 
into contact, without some emotion. I trust that I 
have said nothing that may tend to lower your ideal 
of the office of the ministry, or to damp the ardor of 
your enthusiasm as you look forward to its hoi)- call- 
ing. You have before you the noblest work that is 
given man to do upon the earth. You will have 
cares, and trials, and sorrows, which sometimes may 
be heavier than those of others; but you will have 
also joys, that are more thrilling and enduring. I 
have seen many varieties of experience among my 
fellow-men, and have had main' ups and downs in my 
own ministry. There are many things which 1 should 
not do again if, with my present knowledge, 1 were 
permitted to begin life once more. But even if that 



306 THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

opportunity were afforded me, I would choose again 
to be a minister of the Gospel, only with more enthu- 
siasm and self-sacrifice than ever. I desire to say 
with the sainted Henry Martyn, " Thank God, I am 
Christ's minister." Christ's minister. Let that thought 
fill your souls, and then your service will be of the 
best. Be not like the cuckoo, whose ever changeless 
song is the repetition of its own name. Resemble 
rather the little sky-lark of my native land, which 
rises ever, singing as it soars, until, itself unseen, it 
rains a shower of melody upon the listening earth. 
Forget yourselves. Seek only and always the good 
of souls and the glory of the Lord, then added to 
your own happiness will be the joy of every one 
whom you have brought to Christ ; and in the end 
" When the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall re- 
ceive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." On 
that day may I be a witness of your happiness and a 
sharer of your reward ! 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE QUOTED OR 
REFERRED TO. 



Exodus, iv. 10 39 

" xviii. 18 264 

" xxxiv. 29 20, 175 

Joshua iii. 4 » 174 

" xviii. 3 175 

Judges, ii. 12 175 

" vi. 11-15 39 

" xvi. 20 175 

" xviii. 4 175 

2 Chron. xxv. 9 40 

Psalm lvii. 7, 8 212 

Eccles. xii. 10, 11 108 

Isaiah vi. 1-8 39 

" xxviii. 24-26 97 

"1-4 45 

" lxi. 1-3 104 

Jeremiah, xx. 9 133 

11 xxvi. 2 141 

Ezekiel xxxiii. 7, 8 142 

Amos vhi. 11 213 

Matthew, v. 13 222 

u xiv. 14 147 

" xv. 32 148 

" xx. 26-28 10 

" xxviii. 20 142 

Mark, vi. 26 41 

Luke, iv. 16 213 

" v. 1-16 39 

U XV. 29, 30 222 

" xxii. 26, 27 10 

John, i. 1 221 

" ii. 24, 25 45 

" iii. 14, 16 82 

" iv. 18 222 

u iv. 23 210 

" xii. 25 141 

" xii. 32 82 

Acts, iv. 13 143 

u iv. 20 133 

" iv. 31 139 

11 x. 33 207 

" xiv. 1 6 

w xvii. 16 45 

11 xix. 25 4° 



Acts, xx. 27 -. 139 

" xx. 31 144 

Romans, i. 16 143 

" iii. 25, 26 82 

" iii. 31 89 

" xii. 6 168 

" xii. 18 221 

" xvi. 3 41 

1 Corinthians, i. 13 100 

" i. 23 82 

11 ii. 2 82 

" v. 7, 8 100 

vi. 19, 20 ... . 100 

" ix. 19 13 

" xv. 3-5 82 

xv. 53 221 

2 Corinthians, i. 4 37 

i- 24 13 

iv. 2 17 

iv. 5 12 

iv. 13 134 

v. 19 81 

44 v. 21 82 

u viii. 9 101 

xii. 14 17 

11 xii. 15 14 

Galatians, vi. 14 83 

Ephesians, iv. 11-13 16 

Philippians, i. 20 22 

u iii. iS 144 

Colossians, i. 28. 29 16 

1 Thessalonians, ii. 4 Si 

" ii- 7 M4 

2 Timothy, ii. 15 o 

u iii. 16, 17 -) 

11 iv. a >7 

Hebrews, iv. ia 

11 v. 19 

vl xi. 97 

James, ii. to 

14 iii. a n» 

1 Peter, v. 3 "3 

3 John, 9 41 



(307) 



INDEX. 



Adullam, cave of, a British Senator's notions of, 171, 

Aggressiveness the life of the Church, 288. 

Alexander, Rev. Dr. J. W., referred to, in. 

American congregations and the Bible, 227. 

Apostles, ministry of the, 16. 

Arguments like soldiers, 121, 125. 

Arnot, Rev. William, reference to, 202. 

Articulation, distinctness of, how to be acquired, 72. 

Artificiality to be avoided in the pulpit, 5, 72, and in piety, 260. 

Bautain, M., quoted from, 87. 

Beecher, Rev. Dr. Lyman, reference to his sermons on intem- 
perance, 135. 

Beecher, Rev. H. W., references to, 183, 193, 195. 

Bengel, canon of, for exposition, xyy, 

Bible, the instrument of the preacher's power, 29 ; how to read 
the, so as to prepare for preaching 32 ; biographies of, to 
be studied for a knowledge of human nature, 40 ; no book 
of, to be neglected, 168; too common ignorance of, 170; 
public reading of, 213 ; should be in the pew as well as in 
the pulpit, 227 ; relation of, to science, 301, 303. 

Biblicus, Doctor, 166. 

Binney, Rev. Thomas, references to, 32, 68, 70. 

Blackie, Professor, quoted from, 21, 59. 

Blaikie, Rev. Dr., quoted from, 124. 

Bonar, Rev. A. A., Visitor's Hand-Book of Texts, referred to, 
268. 

Books, knowledge of, a necessary preparation for the preacher, 
53; value of, 54; what to road, 55; how to read, 56; ex- 
emplified in the ease of Butler's Analogy, 57. 

(300) 



3io 



INDEX. 



Brevity in a sermon, not in and of itself an excellence, 126; the 

cry for, not of good omen, 127. 
Bright, John, references to, 64, 171, 262. 
Broadway Tabernacle, congregational singing, 238. 
Brougham, Lord, quotations from, 121, 202. 
Butler's Analogy, how to read, 57. 

Calderwood, Rev. Henry, LL.D., referred to, 60. 

Carlyle, Thomas, reference to, 20. 

Cautions, preliminary, 2-10; regarding expository preaching, 
178 ; regarding the use of illustrations, 196. 

Cecil, Rev. Richard, referred to, 55. 

Chaucer, quotation from, 260. 

Chalmers, Rev. Dr. Thomas, references to, 43, 65, 67, 93, 149, 
152, 252. 

Channing's Self-culture referred to, 59. 

Choirs, what is needed in, 233. 

Christ, tenderness of, a model for preachers, 145 ; use of illus- 
trations by, 195. 

Christian, the ; a citizen, 296. 

Church, life of, consists in aggressiveness, 288. 

Circumlocution, evil of, 67. 

Coleridge, S. T., quotation from, 27. 

Common sense essential to the preacher, 75. 

Comments during the reading of the Scriptures, remarks on, 
224. 

Congregations, difference between Scotch and American, in the 
use of the Bible, 227, 228. 

Conflict, the, between capital and labor, 286 ; how to meet, 294. 

Courage necessary to the preacher's effectiveness, 138; distin- 
guished irom personal invective, 140; how to secure, 141 ; 
relation of tenderness to, 144. 

Cowper, William, referred to, 147, 255. 

Crawford, Rev. Thomas, D.D., on the atonement, referred to, 32. 

Cross, the preaching of, 88 ; two elements of its power, 89. 

Cumming, Rev. Dr., reference to, 224. 



INDEX. 



311 



DALE, R. W., reference to, essntial on the atonement, 32. 
Definiteness of aim essential to an effective sermon, no. 
Delivery, general counsels on, 72-75, 148; use of a manuscript 

in, 149 ; comparison of different methods, 1 50. 
Demosthenes, references to, 75, 202. 
Design of the ministry, 15-18. 
Dick, Rev. John, D.D., story of, 166 ; lectures on the Acts of the 

Apostles, 179. 
Diminutive themes to be avoided by the preacher, ill. 
Doctrine to be preached, 84, 86. 
Dull devotion, cure of, 212. 

Earnestness distinguished from rant, 131 ; springs from per- 
sonal conviction, 1 32 ; and from a vivid realization of the 
position of the hearers, 135. 

"Ecce Homo," quotation from, 290. 

Effective preaching defined, 107; effort to secure, not incon- 
sistent with faith in the agency of the Holy Spirit, 107 ; 
definiteness of aim necessary to, no ; precision of language 
necessary to, no; clearness in arrangement necessary to, 
121 ; depends on the preacher's earnestness, 131 ; on his 
courage, 138 ; and on his tenderness, 144. 

Eloquence different from rhetoric, 18-21. 

Emphasis, importance of, appropriate, 74. 

Emerson, R. W., referred to, 59. 

Epithets, employment of, 66. 

Exhaustiveness in a sermon not always desirable, 1 1 2. 

Expository Preaching defined, 155, 156, 157; method of. 15S; 
use of historical imagination in, 159; powers required for 
160; preparation for, 160; brings preacher and hearers 
face to face with the mind of the Spirit, 162 ; secures variety 
of topics, 164; keeps the minister from neglecting ruths 
which might otherwise be overlooked [66 ; secures attention 
to all the books of the Bible, 168; promotes biblical intelli- 
gence, 170; accumulates stores for topical sermons, K-- 



312 



INDEX. 



objections to, answered, 175 ; cautions concerning, 178 ; ex- 
amples of, 179 ; relation of, to social questions, 293. 
Extern porizers have frequently that which is equivalent to writ- 
ing, 118. 

Faber, F. W., quoted from, 138. 

Fairbairn, Principal, quoted from, 12. 

Follett, Sir Wm., story of, with George Stephenson, 123. 

Galatians, Epistle to the, characterized and accounted for, 

135- 

Gatty, Mrs. Alfred, " Parables from Nature/' referred to, 235. 

Gospel described, 81 ; the true remedy for social evils, 288. 

Graham, Rev. William, referred to, 55, 60. 

Grant, Sir Robert, reference to, 244. 

Guthrie, Rev. Dr. Thomas, references to, and quotations from, 
43, 65 ; on the use of illustrations, 192; memoirs of, quoted 
from, 187, 188 ; experiences at Arbrilot, 191 ; at his highland 
home, 195 ; tendency of, in illustration, 202. 

Half-Truths guarded against by expository preaching, 168. 

Hall, Rev. Robert, references to, 7, 118, 262. 

Hamilton, Rev. Dr. James, illustrations of, from spiders, 199 ; 

story told by, 249. 
Hamilton, Sir William, on Guthrie's illustrations, 187. 
Heathenism at home, 285 ; how to meet, 289-294. 
Henry, Matthew, commentary of, 225. 
Herbert, George, quotation from, 233. 

Highland Shepherd, gathering his flock, 122 ; and the lambs, 275. 
Hippodrome services, reference to, 290-292. 
History to be studied for a knowledge of the human heart, 41. 
Horace, quotation from, 26. 

Human heart, knowledge of, necessary to the preacher, 35. 
Hunt, Holman, story of his painting, " The Light of the World," 

278. 



INDEX. 



313 



Hymns, selection of the, for public worship, 237 ; should be read 
before they are sung, 239. 

Illustrations, use of, in preaching, 183 ; must not form the 
staple of a sermon, 183 ; lesson in use of, from an English 
artisan, 185 ; make the thought plain, 1.86; have a force of 
proof, 187; awaken the attention, 190; make permanent 
impressions, 191 ; how to get, 192 ; use of, by our Lord, 195 ; 
not to be employed for things already plain, 196 ; must not 
be too numerous, 197 ; recondite things must not be em- 
ployed for, 198 ; humor in, 200; must be accurately expressed, 
200 ; full force of, must go to illuminate the truth, 201. 

Imitation, evil of, 5. 

Importance of self-knowledge to the preacher, 37-40. 

Individuality to be preserved by the preacher, 5. 

Irving, Rev. Edward, references to, 125, 276. 

James, Rev. J. A., referred to, 93. 

Jay, Rev. William, quotations from, in reference to, 20, 122, 124, 

146, 149. 
Jethro's Advice to Moses valuable to ministers, 264. 
Johnson, Samuel, referred to, 56. 
Jouffroy, saying of, concerning scientific men, 300. 

Ker, Rev. Dr. John, on the logic of illustrations, 187; on the 
originals of Guthrie's similes, 195. 

Lantern, the Preacher's, quoted from, 65, 199. 
Lawson, Rev. Dr. George, story of, 76. 
Leighton, Archbishop, quoted from, 210. 
Leifchild, Dr., quotation from, 118. 
Length of a sermon, remarks on the, 125. 
Liddon, Canon, quoted from, 243. 
Life Thoughts, by 11. \Y. Beecher* [93 

"Like" related to "likely," 1 88 ; and that foi which we have l 
" liking," 190. 



3H 



INDEX. 



Lighthouse at Sandy-Hook, illustration from, 203. 

Light of the World, by Holman Hunt, 278. 

Literature, knowledge of, necessary as a preparation for the 

preacher, 53. 
Logic of illustrations, 187. 
Love and Righteousness the two elements of the power of the 

Cross, 89. 

Macall, Rev. Dr., references to, 21, 220. 

Macaulay's Essays, quoted from, 203. 

MacGregor, John, referred to, 49. 

Maclaren, Rev. Alexander, quoted from, 85, 92. 

Macleod, Rev. Alexander, D.D., reference to his Christus Con- 
solator, 104. 

Manuscript, use of a, 148-152. 

Martyn, Henry, saying of, 306. 

Masses, the, condition of, 285 ; danger to the nation from, 286 ; 
danger to the Church from, 287. 

Method in a sermon, true place of, 124. 

Milton, John, quoted from, 71, 188. 

Mingling with men recommended for the getting of a knowledge 
of human nature, 44. 

Minister, Christ the model, 11 ; for the church, not the 
church for him, 13 ; a helper of others, 14, 45, 48; must 
renounce self, 1 5 ; different from an Evangelist, 94 ; relation 
of, to choir, 236 ; should sing with the people, 239 ; should 
not attempt too many things at once in the beginning of his 
pastorate, 261 ; should not hang everything on his own neck, 
264 ; should not seek to have his own way in everything, 265 ; 
must give himself entirely to his work, 283 ; should organize 
his people for work, 289 ; relation of, to politics, 295 ; 
should not be an alarmist about science, 299. 

Ministry a service, 10 ; design of the, 15 ; range of the, 99, 285. 

of the Apostles, 16. 

Monotony, evil of, 74, 

Mont Blanc, illustration from, 164. 



INDEX. 



315 



Moody, D. L., work of, references to, 34, 290, 293. 
Music not worth a church quarrel, 231 ; general remarks on, 
234. 

Newton, John, tenderness of, 146, 

Nehemiah, book of, too commonly neglected, 169; a Scottish 

woman's criticism on tenth chapter of, 169. 
Nicol, Robert, motto from, 295. 

Oratory distinguished from rhetoric, 18-21 ; Sunday-school, 
common fault of, 184. 

Pastoral visitation, personal experiences in, 271 ; present plan 
of, 273 ; hints for, 275. 

■ of the sick, importance of, 267 ; counsels on, 268 ; 

indirect benefits of, 270. 

Pastorate, relation of, to the pulpit, 259-261 ; hints for the begin- 
ning of a, 261-267. 

Paul, example of, 12, 14, 17, 22; gospel according to, 82, SS f 

91, 92, 98, 102 ; tenderness of, 144; humor of, 200. 
Peace in a church essential to prosperity, 235. 
Pearsal, J. Spencer, on public worship, 254. 

Pen, use of the, an essential preparation for the preacher, 61 ; 
gives definiteness to thinking, 62; ministers' too readiness of 
expression, 62 ; secures precision of language, 114; secures 
that each part of the discourse shall have its due propor- 
tion, 116. 

Personal experiences of the author, 13, 28, 33, 37, 42, 43, 46, 60, 

92, 95, 112, 147, 149, 150, 185, 193, 200, 263, 271, 
Perspicuity essential to a good style, 64. 

Pew, Bible should be in the, 227. 

Piety, artificial, to be avoided, 260. 

Plain things do not need to be illustrated, 196. 

Politics and the pulpit, 295, 299. 

Porter, President, on Books and Reading", referred to, 59. 

Rev. Dr., of Andover, referred to, 



316 INDEX, 

Pousa, the Chinese potter, story of, 21. 

Praise, public, use of hymns in, 231 ; use of instrumental music 
in, 232 ; employment of choirs in, 233 ; selections of hymns 
for, 237 ; relation'of minister's example and preaching to, 

239. 

Prayer, connection of, in the closet with power in the pulpit, 26. 

Prayer, public, most important part of service, 241 ; requires 
preparation of the heart, 241 ; must spring from a knowl- 
edge of the circumstances of the people, 241 ; should be 
preceded by a season of privacy, 242 ; exhaustive labor of, 
243 ; should be common and not individual, 245 ; petitionary 
and not hortatory, 246 ; real and not artificial, 249 ; definite 
and direct, 251 ; intercessory and not selfish, 254. 

Preacher cannot begin at that which is the maturity of another, 
2; preparation of the, 25-78; must be a sincere Christian, 
25 ; differs from an evangelist, 95. 

Preacher's Lantern, The, referred to, 65, 199. 

Preaching, expository, 155 ; advantages of, 162-172 ; objections 
to, answered, 175 ; cautions concerning, 178 ; examples of, 
179 ; relation of, to social questions, 293. 

Preaching, effective, defined, 107 ; qualities of, in the sermon, 
no; in the preacher, 131. 

Precision of language, how to secure, 114. 

Preparation of the preacher, 25-78. 

Proportion in a sermon, how to secure, n 6-1 18. 

Public reading of the Scriptures, hints on, 215-227. 

Public speaking, how to secure facility and distinctness in, 72. 

Public worship, relation of, to preaching, 207 ; essential things 
in, 209 ; relation of a filial heart to, 210. 

Pulpit, theme of, 81 ; range of, 99 ; peculiar and distinctive 
power of, 162; relation of, to pastorate, 259; relation of, 
to social questions, 285 ; to political matters, 295 ; to scien- 
tific subjects, 299. 

Range of the Preacher, 99, 285. 

Reading of the Scriptures in public worship, advantages of, 214 ; 



INDEX. 



317 



reverence in, 214; selection of passages for, 215 ; relation 
of private devotional reading to, 216 ; length of selections 
for, 218 ; whole attention to be given to, for the time, 219 ; 
should indicate the meaning, 220 ; hints for, 222-224 » 
whether or not to be accompanied by comments, 224-227 ; 
preparation necessary for, 223. 

Rhetoric different from eloquence, 18-21. 

Robertson, Rev. F. W., referred to, 119. 

Sandy-Hook Lighthouse, illustration from, 203. 
Sankey, Mr., singing the Gospel, 233. 

Science does not meet all human needs, 303 ; not necessarily 
connected with infidelity, 300 ; relation of revelation to, 

301, 303. 
Scientific subjects and the pulpit, 291-305. 
Scriptures, acquaintance with the, essential to the preacher, 29- 

35 ; public reading of the, 213 ; copies of the, should be in 

the pews, 227. 
Self-knowledge, importance of, to the preacher, 37. 
Self-renunciation the root of excellence, 14, 21. 
Seminary duties not to be neglected, 27. 
Sermon should have a distinct aim, no ; should be written, 114 

like a pyramid, 122 ; like the shooting of an arrow, 122. 
Shakespeare, works of, to be studied for a knowledge of human 

nature, 41 ; Guthrie's opinion of, 43 ; Sir James Stephens on, 

44; quotation from, 131. 
Shepherd, Highland, gathering his flock, 122 ; with the lambs. 275. 
Ship-builder on the Tyne, story of, 47. 
Sick, visitation ol the, hints for, 267-270. 
r Smeaton, Rev. Professor, on the atonement, reference to, 32, 
Social subjects and the pulpit, 285. 
South Kensington Museum, illustration from, 159 ; 
Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., quotations from and references to, 10. 119, 

184, 224, 254 ; treasury of David, 225. 
Spirit of adoption, the, is the spirit o( supplication, 21 1. 
Stanley, Dean A. P., referred to, 55. 



3i8 



INDEX. 



Stephenson. George, story of, 123. 

Storrs, Rev. R. S., D D., referred to, 120. 

Style, how to form a good, 63 ; perspicuity of, 64 ; evil of pre- 

tensiveness in, 64. 
Sunday-school oratory, common fault of, 184. 
Swift, Dean, saying of, 56. 
System of theology to be formed from the Bible, 31. 

Tenderness necessary to effectiveness, 144 ; how related to 

courage, 144 ; how to be acquired, 146. 
Tennyson, Alfred, quoted from, 9, 135. 
Theme of the minister, 81. 
Theological training, necessity of, 27. 
Trench, Archbishop, quoted from, 189. 
Truths in situ found by the Expositor, 165. 

Unconsciousness, Carlyle's gospel of, 20. 
Unity in a sermon enforced, 122. 
Use of a manuscript, 149. 

Visitation, of the sick, 267-270; pastoral, 271 ; hints for, 
275- 

Whateley, Archbishop, references to, 32, 67. 
Whittier, J. G., quotation from, 268. 
Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, quoted from, 30. 
Willmott's " Pleasures and Advantages of Literature " referred 
to, 59. 

Young Ministers apt to forget to preach to Christians, 95 , 
like young delvers, 113; danger of, from attempting too 
many things at first, 262. 

Young, importance of looking well to, 275. 



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